


Jesse's Boy

by berzz



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-02-16 00:15:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13042521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berzz/pseuds/berzz
Summary: In which Jesse’s got himself a boy and Blaine wants to make him his. rocker!straight!Blaine





	1. thunder, porch, barbecue, and almost-crash

**Author's Note:**

> Don't want to shove the music down your throats, I'm hoping to pique your interest naturally, which is why the names of the songs are rarely mentioned. All lyrics are in italics, none of them belong to me, and all of the songs can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfCJHSOib1deVvEwnw-cNcayc_owc4Zy), in order of appearance.

“Blaine, sweetheart, you’re scaring me.”

Pamela tilts her head to the side, watching Blaine from across the kitchen table—the very same table Blaine’s family used to gather at every night to have dinner for as long as Blaine can remember.

What used to be his family, now.

Outside the sanctuary of Blaine’s childhood house, it’s dark and quiet; a warm, breezy night in early August. Ironically, Blaine realizes that it’s been almost exactly three months since, at that very same table, his mother first told him about the divorce.

What three months could do to a person, Blaine thinks idly, tugging at the sleeves of his sweatshirt and cloaking his clammy fingers in it. He shifts in his chair, looking away—somewhere, anywhere but into his mother’s anxious eyes. His own eyes start to prickle with tears; he reaches up to press a fist to his quivering lips.

“Blaine,” Pamela chokes out in a flat, broken whisper with her heart racing in an apprehension.

Blaine squeezes his eyes shut, doesn’t move doesn’t breathe as he waits for the tears to trickle down his eyelashes. At the sight of this, Pamela feels her heart sink low into her stomach—until Blaine, as if somehow being able to tell, suddenly nods, puts his hands down, and pulls himself together.

Eyes boring into the tabletop, he slides his hand forward with his palm up, _fast_ —almost as if afraid his cowardice will catch on. Without a second of hesitation, Pamela cups his offered hand with two of her warm palms. Squeezing it reassuringly, she doesn’t give up on her desperate efforts to search out Blaine’s eyes. Her boy has grown so much over this past year, his freshman year at college.

He looked so small now: his curly hair a boyishly unkempt mess, his timeworn sweatshirt the very same one he’d always pick to wear when coming home from Dalton.

Sucking in a sniffling breath, Blaine forces himself to look up and into his mother’s eyes. Forces himself to hold her gaze when he does so.

“Mom,” he says in a voice that comes out hollow and raspy.

The tears keep clouding his vision as if deliberately abetting his escape from her trying eye contact, but he holds on. Pamela’s face is contorted with panic.

“Momma, I’m gay,” his voice breaks.

*

Three months ago at that table, Blaine didn’t know.

Three months ago Blaine was just winding up his second semester at OSU where he majored in journalism while sharing an apartment with his close friend Jesse in Downtown Columbus. Right underneath it, there was a pub that hosted them as their cover band Thursday through Saturday, for almost half a year by then.

Three months ago, their drummer Ian had just transferred to SMTD in Michigan, leaving all three of them—Santana, Jesse, and Blaine—with no other option but to put their attendance at that pub on hold. At least until Jesse, a self-proclaimed leader of the band, found them somebody new to fill Ian’s place.

But, little did they know, the pub managed to find a replacement for _them_ sooner than they did for Ian.

Then, along with looking for a new drummer that would be willing to provide them with a place to rehearse—among Santana, Jesse, and Blaine, Ian was the only one who’d grown up in Columbus and lived in a suburban house, a place that came with a basement and a relative seclusion from the outside world—they also had to find themselves a new place to _perform_ , preferably that which would pay them to do that.

Three months ago, Blaine and his mother were sitting at that exact table with that exact silence hovering in the air between them. Only that time, it was Pamela’s turn to drop a bomb.

Inside the pockets of his not-so-tight yet not-so-loose-fitted jeans, Blaine could feel his cell phone buzzing—Jesse buffeting him with text messages.

That day Jesse’d finally found Finn.

That day Blaine’s mother first told him about her and Devon’s plans to file for a divorce.

It was the dawn of May. Outside, Blaine could hear the freshly-revived tree crowns swish to the gentle gusts of wind; inside, he could see a red-orange sunbeam piercing through their kitchen curtains, exposing hectic motes of dust floating silently in the room.

As silently as Blaine was sitting across the table from his mother, staring blankly into nowhere.

“Please say something, sweetheart,” Pamela said just above a whisper.

Blaine blinked away the wetness in his eyes and squeezed her hand.

“I’m so, sorry,” he said then.

Pamela let out a tearful laugh, almost hysterical, and pressed a kiss to the back of Blaine’s hand. Blaine didn’t like it when she did this, but at that moment, she didn’t think twice. He didn’t either.

“What are you sorry for, honey?”

Blaine swallowed and looked up at her; what he was about to say nobody in their family had been brave enough to admit to before.

“I’m sorry I didn’t let you do this sooner.”

He knew—he’d always known, it’s just that at some point in time it was too soon, too early for his still maturing mind to deal with something this adult—and at some point, it was too late. They’d missed out on the right moment to go through with it and the only thing left for them to do was to embrace the fact that everybody in this house would keep sacrificing everything for the sake of Blaine’s well-being. Even if it meant sentencing oneself to a marriage that had been exhausted of love an awfully long time ago.

Blaine felt like he should be grateful for how much his parents loved him, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

“Nonsense,” Pamela said, shaking her head vigorously. She straightened in her chair, tightened her hold on Blaine’s hand, and looked deep into his eyes. “Don’t you ever entertain this thought, you hear me?”

That day Blaine decided to stay at his mother’s until the end of the week—which was the last week before his summer term was going to start. No matter how many times his mom tried to reassure him—sway him, even—that it was okay to take a break this summer, Blaine was adamant in his intending to finish undergrad as soon as physically possible.

The sooner he would be done with it, the sooner he could find himself a high-paying, full-time job; the sooner he’d be able to reimburse his parents all the money that went into his studying but otherwise could’ve gone into building better lives for themselves.

With brief performances at the bar (wherein the cash would get split between all four members of the band) and the mere luck Blaine would occasionally stumble upon in freelancing— _that_ with the addition of schoolwork Blaine tended to with the most diligence of them all—the very best he could hope for was to glean enough by the end of the month to pay his share of rent. And even then, due to the fickle nature of those sources of income, he would usually end up trying to pay his mom back after the payment was due and she’d taken care of it.

And, of course, those who knew Pamela Anderson, also knew that these kinds of attempts were ultimately bound to fail, leaving all the money for Blaine to keep and not taking ‘no’ for an answer.

Jesse, for one, didn’t stress about those types of things. Had long since accepted the fact that his parents were going to cover his tuition as well as his living expenses—and kept ordering take-out every day, had little concern over price tags at the bars, held a couple of gym memberships simultaneously.

And maybe there was something right about that. Maybe it was simply Blaine and his younger-brother insecurities.

 _Cooper_ fended for himself.

*

“Why hello my straight friend _Blaine_ ,” he heard Jesse’s voice say into his ear upon picking up. “And here I thought you were never going to pick up.”

Blaine grimaced in confusion at the nickname.

“What?” he asked, amused at his friend’s weird ways sometimes.

“What?” Jesse parroted him instantly, intonation and all. Blaine could hear a grin in his voice.

Blaine drew his eyebrows together with an uncertain smile but chose to ignore this.

“What’s up with the new drummer?” he asked instead, stopping by the entrance of an all-too-familiar grocery store. Pamela told him she’d spotted a better parking spot and would repark; Blaine told her he would be waiting here, right by the good-old _Kroger_ signboard.

“The drummer rocks,” Jesse told him. “But you have yet to see his brother,” he added as his voice slipped into this low and sweet silk he saved for flirting with his boys. It made Blaine’s skin crawl; for some reason, he was creeped out by hearing it speak so close to his ear. “I guarantee there’s no way your heterosexual libido is going to stand up against this treasure.”

Blaine smirked, studying the concrete under his tattered New Balance sneakers.

“But seriously though, we’re in their garage now, setting everything up; when are you gonna be here? I texted you the address.”

“Yeah, about that,” Blaine said, threading a hand through his curly head of hair. “I’ll stay till Monday.”

Jesse didn’t respond right away; Blaine heard him talk to somebody before the background noise started tapering off—Jesse excused himself.

“Is everything okay, Blaine?”

Blaine sighed into the phone right when he caught sight of Pamela climbing out of her car and slamming the door shut before she locked it with her key, heading his way. “I don’t know,” he said. “My parents are getting divorced. I want to spend some time with my mom. Be there for her.”

The sun would instantly turn from pleasantly warm into scorching each time the soft wind would die off. Blaine wished he hadn’t forgotten his sunglasses at home.

“Blaine, I’m...sorry,” Jesse says in a heavy voice on the other end of the line. “How are you holding up?”

“Thanks, I’m okay,” Blaine said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

*

Blaine remembers that time he and his mom shopped at Kroger as if it was yesterday. He was pushing his weight onto the shopping cart, lifting his feet off the floor as he nudged it forward while Pamela was filling it with groceries, leveling a half-charmed, half-chastising gaze at him.

“Remember the last time we did this together?” she asks him, wiggling her eyebrows.

Blaine grins.

“Feels like in another lifetime,” he says as he tugs a bag of tortilla chips off the shelf—and with it, a can of salsa stuck nearby.

Staying he is. At Pamela’s unimpressed gaze, he bats his eyelashes innocently.

“Some things never change,” she sighs as they switch places behind the shopping cart. “Jesse’s not gonna miss you?” she asks conversationally.

For some reason, Blaine finds this question funny.

“No. We were just talking,” he says, smiling. “Told me he’d recruited a new drummer into our band.”

Pamela smiles knowingly.

“Persuasive much, is he?”

Blaine nods, shoving hands into the pockets of his jeans as they approach the checkout.

“Poor girl of his dreams, I wonder what that’s like,” Pamela mutters jokingly, making a face.

Blaine takes a deep breath, straightens up his shoulders, and—smiles at her words. They join the line.

“Speaking of girls,” she drawls, goading him, and this time Blaine can’t help the genuine smile as he rolls his eyes. “We were so preoccupied with my personal life that we’ve completely missed out on yours!”

“Mom,” Blaine begs.

“How’s life been treating your good friend... _Santana_?” Pamela mocks in a low voice.

“Mom,” Blaine smiles at her, and she giggles.

“You know I’m only fooling with you. Though I have to say I was truly impressed by her straightforwardness,” Pamela adds in a gossip-like mutter.

Blaine hangs his head, feeling his face go red, again.

“No like seriously,” she insists good-heartedly. “Of all the ways I’ve been addressed by the girls my sons dated, _‘Take your paws off of my boyfriend, bitch’_ was something else for sure.”

_“Mom!”_

*

The first time Blaine saw him, a roll of thunder reverberated across the room. Literally.

It’s been a week since Finn became a part of their band; a week that Blaine spent by his mother’s side in Westerville while Jesse was trying to get into Finn’s brother’s pants, Kurt. (Amid practice sessions with Finn and Santana and his constant texting Blaine about how _‘fucking gorgeous’_ Kurt was.)

The thunderstorm catches on to Blaine back when he is fumbling with google maps in his car, driving down The Outerbelt on his way to Finn’s. A dark, ominous tune pervades the interior of his car, sending vibrations through the leather of Blaine’s seat and the steering wheel. Blaine turns the volume higher up and relaxes into his seat, taking a moment to appreciate the cluster of thick, deep-grey clouds brooding over the horizon as the whole car bathes in a menacing bass throb.

_an awful noise_  
_filled the air_  
_i heard a scream_  
_in the woods somewhere_  


Blaine rolls the windows down, letting in a surge of wind that instantly winnows up his curls, making them flap wildly. Feeling a distant, meek longing for a cigarette, Blaine squeezes the wheel harder and sucks in a breath through his nose, eyes sinking further deep into the road in front of him. The air is humid and thick with the fresh taste of thunder and lightning, invigorating in its novelty; it’s the first thunderstorm in the year.

Blaine chances a glance to his left and sees the last strip of the sky that used to be clear now blurred into a deep, misty shade of blue. Cradled by the dark pall from above and the downtown rooftops from below, it was the last trace of the horizon, a distinct frontier between the clouds and the city.

When Blaine reaches his destination in Northern Columbus, it’s pouring, and the very lightning to which the next peal of thunder will belong flashes bright and fast just as Blaine shuts the driver’s door. He can hear a familiar bass sequence coming from inside the garage and smiles as he pulls up the hood of his scarlet sweatshirt, hurrying forward. Jesse’s told him that they’ve only been playing covers so far, the light ones: both to make it easier for Finn to blend in and due to Blaine’s temporal absence, their lead electric guitarist.

The garage gate is cracked open on purpose and Blaine rolls it up just enough for him to slip inside, then pulls it down all the way. At the sound of Jesse’s vehement voice, Blaine smiles before he even pulls his hood back.

 _“Are you ready? Are you ready for this! Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?”_ Jesse sings, pointing a finger at Blaine.

Blaine beams at him with his wild, charming smile, dragging the slider of his zip-up all the way down as he undoes his red hoodie and lets it drape loosely over his clothed torso: a thin, grayish T-shirt underneath.

When Blaine glances around and lays his eyes on _him_ for the first time, the roll of thunder floats atop of Santana’s bass and Finn’s drumbeat.

He’s perched on some kind of wooden crate, legs crossed in a composed, elegant manner, his body slanted slightly to the back where he holds his weight with one of his hands. His other hand is wrapped around a glass of cocktail that he holds up to his lips in a manner just as graceful as everything about his posture seems to be.

He’s wearing all black: a dark turtleneck with a high collar wrapping neatly around his neck, a frayed, greyish jeans hugging his legs, and fashionably huge boots that occasionally swing to the uptempo beat.

With that same coquettish albeit dispassionate fashion of his, his tongue swirls idly around the straw as he watches Jesse perform.

Those three to four seconds that Kurt’s gaze lingers on Blaine, Blaine feels his face go hot. It’s then that the thunder rolls over them.

And maybe Blaine starts to see things or the corners of Kurt’s lips actually _twitch_ in the weakest, _quietest_ smile that almost isn’t there—right before dismissively, Kurt steers his attention back to Jesse, his coolness otherwise untinged.

 _“Another one bites the dust-uh!”_ Jesse belts out, throwing his head of tiny curls back. From behind him, Santana’s blatant gaze bores into Blaine, her eyebrow arched as her fingers work the chords without the slightest bit of imprecision.

Blaine faces her gaze with a stiff smile as his arms work to fling his damp hoodie off of his shoulders. Spotting his guitar all set up and waiting for him in the corner (thank you, J) Blaine makes a beeline for it, nodding his greeting to Finn on the way. Blaine drapes his sweatshirt over the back of one of the chairs, lifts his guitar up, and ducks his head of curls to throw the strap around his neck. The soft, cotton T-shirt hugging his torso seems to be fairly dry and untouched by the wetness of the rain.

One hand wrapping around the slim fingerboard, Blaine checks the overdrive pedal and bends down to tweak a couple of knobs. Then, with a concentrated expression, he turns to face Jesse and nods to the beat, his right hand flying up to push his wet locks of hair up and away.

_and another one gone_  
_and another one gone_  


Jesse writhes at the mic stand, singing the notes out, and then—raises his fist up.

 _hey!_  
Blaine strums down the guitar once, sharp, eyes on Jesse.  
_i’m gonna get you too_  
—and four more abrupt times for each syllable, as his left hand blindly switches chords and slides down the fingerboard sharply when he’s done. The song enters its bridge with Finn altering the rhythm, thumping at the snare drum now with both sticks in sync, changing to a flatter, heavier beat. Both Jesse and Santana pick it up by clapping along and Blaine supports it by slapping at the guitar’s strings with his palm. Everybody’s voices, with the exception of Kurt’s and Blaine’s, start to echo off the garage walls as Santana and Finn back up Jesse’s solo, building up for the last verse to come.

_another one bites the dust_  
_ow!_  
_another one bites the dust_  
_hey! hey!_

Blaine glances at Santana behind him as his right hand sneaks into the back pocket of his jeans to fish out his pick. Santana winks his way when they make an eye contact just before getting back to her recurring chord progression, plucking the strings with her nails while singing along. Blaine rolls his eyes weakly at the gesture but can’t help the mad smile; his hand retrieves into its previous position when he ducks his head to glance at the fingerboard, locating the next due chords. And—deftly—he dives into the quick rhythm of yanking the strings with a pick while whizzing his left hand up and down the fingerboard.

He’s missed this.

*

“Blaine,” says Jesse after he and Blaine pat each other on the back when the song is over. “Please, meet Kurt,” he sighs, squeezing Blaine’s shoulder as he turns to look at Kurt sitting opposite of them on the other side of the room. Blaine has no other choice but to glance Kurt’s way, too; he hasn’t looked at him once during the song.

With his back held straight and calm, Kurt sits at the very same spot, sucking at the remnants of his cocktail, cheeks hollowed in. Blaine lets himself watch askance the way Kurt swings his feet back and forth, kicking at the wood in a child-like boredom that almost strikes Blaine as adorable. Then, he sees Kurt put his empty glass down next to him before gracefully letting himself off the crate. He snatches a decorative cherry off of the brim of his cocktail and sucks it from his fingers; then faces them, slides his hands into his back pockets, and starts to tread cattishly towards them. Blaine keeps his gaze at the level of his chest.

As soon as Kurt is close enough, Jesse reaches to tug him into the possessive circle of his arms.

“Kurt, this is my best friend Blaine,” Jesse mumbles into Kurt’s hair, Kurt’s back to his chest. Just as perfectly composed as before—almost irresponsive, it seems to Blaine—Kurt tilts his head to the side, watching Blaine.

Blaine watches the way Kurt’s thumbs curl into his own front pockets as Jesse nuzzles the side of his neck.

“Hi Blaine,” Kurt says to Blaine, craning his neck for Jesse.

His voice must be the definition of ethereal: soft and high and the perfect complement to that captivating, self-possessed demeanor of his. If Blaine could imagine being able to grasp it, he is sure it would feel exactly the way silk does, delicate and smooth and _cold_ to the touch.

And, either it’s just Blaine, or he indeed catches a tinge of irony hidden in it, as if some kind of inside joke Blaine hasn’t been let in on.

Nobody seems to laugh, though; Jesse keeps nibbling at Kurt’s neck, Kurt keeps watching Blaine right from under the touch of Jesse’s lips—and suddenly, Blaine feels idly hot, and twitchy, and _utterly_ out of place. He strains a polite smile and hangs his head and looks down at his toe kicking the floor.

From behind the drums, Finn clears his throat—which, fortunately for Blaine, muffles the final snicker Santana refuses to hold any longer.

“Oh right, and Finn,” Jesse adds almost as an afterthought. Perhaps a tad too eager, Blaine turns to shake hands with Finn, engaging him in a small-talk that, for once, isn’t perfunctory at all.

He doesn’t see a bleak shade of amusement fleet across Kurt’s features. No one sees the blatant _wtf_ expression plastered on Santana’s face.

*

 _your hair_  
_and your eyes_  
_i saw them in the night_

Blaine strolls down the hallway inside Hummel-Hudson’s house until he reaches the corner that bends into their living room. In the mystifying, bluish twilight, he leans on the wall, watching others relax on the couch to the logy tune wafting from the speakers.

Hearing the soft voice float over the dark music, Blaine instantly recognizes it as belonging to Hope Sandoval. The subdued, hazy atmosphere in the room seems to be perfect for this particular song; Blaine watches Santana drag at her cigar before lazily puffing out rings of smoke, all perfectly shaped by her lips of an exquisite, deep-red color. She sits in an armchair with her boots pressed into the edge of the coffee table, knees swaying to the sluggish rhythm. Next to her Blaine sees Kurt and Jesse snuggled together on the sofa facing outward. Kurt’s elbow is resting on the back of the couch, his sharp chin is propped up by his delicate knuckles. Jesse strokes his inner thigh, whispering something in his ear, but Kurt seems to be listening only half-heartedly, his expression serene and smoothed out in the hushed light.

In the hushed light, Blaine can see it almost _glowing_ in its beguiling paleness. He finds himself unable to look away; finds no need to.

“You and Santana, huh?” he hears Finn’s sudden voice creep up on him.

He jerks, turning to look at his left. Finn seems to have come straight from the kitchen, two opened Coronas in his hands. With an amiable smile, he holds out one to Blaine. Staring up at him dumbly, Blaine accepts it with a soft thanks.

Finn nods to the music and takes a sip.

“A thing?” Finn elaborates his initial question with an equally cryptic one after swallowing down the bitter liquid.

“No,” Blaine shakes his head softly, turning back to face others. Finn nods. Blaine smiles. “Go for it if you dare.”

For a moment or two, Finn gives him an odd look before eventually catching up.

“Oh. _Oh_. No, no, I—I’ve got a girlfriend in New York,” Finn explains.

“Oh,” Blaine responds.

“I just, y’know, saw the way you were looking at her, and just thought...” 

Blaine clears his throat and rushes to take a sip of his own.

“Nice place,” he comments first thing after swallowing.

Finn shrugs, glancing around.

“It’s all Kurt; this place is nothing like it used to be back when it belonged to my father.”

Blaine turns to look up at Finn.

“You and Kurt have different fathers?”

Finn shakes his head no as he swallows down his gulp of beer.

“Not even that, we’ve different parents. We’re _step_ brothers,” he explains then. “My father died when I was an infant; Kurt’s mom died when he was eight. Our sophomore, Kurt set his dad and my mom up on one of those parents meetings,” Finn recalls with a nostalgic smile. “Two days in and they were head over heels,” he grins, glancing down at the rim of his bottle. Then, his private smile falters as his eyes cloud with something deep and dark—mournful it seems.“Next year...,” Finn starts but never finishes as the front door behind them suddenly bursts open, causing Blaine to jerk with a bottle in his hand.

With a wild look on his face, he turns to look at the disturber and sees a blonde girl with a high ponytail step inside before, helping herself with both hands, she whistles over the music.

“What’s up bitches!” she shouts excitedly. “Guess who just passed all of her finals and is ready to party until dawn?”

Blaine looks around; Kurt’s jaw falls open in a pleasant surprise, Finn gives the girl a high-five; Santana takes her feet off of the table, shifting in her armchair, intrigued. Apparently, everyone but Blaine has some idea of what the hell is going on.

“Somebody needs to turn this dirge off and gimme gimme some Britney, tequila, _and_ a pole,” the girl dictates, clapping her hands as to rally everybody up before she gets to the laptop and cuts off Hope Sandoval’s voice.

_it’s britney, bitch_

*

Before Blaine even knows it, this becomes a part of their routine—the mini-party following each Friday session. The first one, though, the _Sunday_ one, lasted longer for everybody else than it did for him, for a) he feared that his ears were about to bleed before the first Britney Spears song was even over and b) he was the only one who had school literally the next day, so he left.

In all fairness, though, those semi-afterparties became a thing before Blaine was even introduced to them; to this day, he keeps forgetting that first week he spent in Westerville over which the entire dynamic of his life in Columbus had changed so drastically, without him knowing.

Apart from him, Santana was the only one else who had a busy schedule; this is why Jesse didn’t insist on them gathering far too often: two times a week was enough. Plus, there were times when their fooling around at Hummel-Hudson’s led to the impromptu sessions—they were spending most of their weekends there anyways. Blaine stuck around only on Fridays.

Kurt would show up at the garage during the rehearsals and stay for at least one song. Sometimes he would have a drink in his hand, sometimes he would chew at the fruit, his favorite one being apple. Usually, he would haul himself up to perch on that crate from the first day. Glancing his way askance, Blaine would see him sit with this thin legs spread and swinging to the music, hands pressed into the wooden edge in between. Sometimes he would tilt his head and watch others play with a contemplative look on his face; sometimes he would mimic dancing from his seat, moving his hands in the air with closed eyes and a concentrated frown on his brow.

Either way, Blaine would find himself thinking again and again that if he were to write the perfect novel, all of its characters would look and talk and _breathe_ the way Kurt did.

Next Friday—the next time Blaine stayed after the practice—he and Kurt talked for the first time.

His mother calls him; he steps outside to get some privacy. It’s fully darkened by now; a quiet, peaceful night in early May. Blaine listens to his mom tell him about how all the paperwork is over with; in pauses between their voices, Blaine hears the comforting sounds of crickets. He tells her about Kurt and Finn.

After they hang up, Blaine doesn’t want to go inside right away and decides to sit for a while on the porch. He sits down on the steps and takes a deep breath of the late-night air that somehow comes shaky and shuddery—right before somebody opens the front door behind him. Blaine turns to see who that is and feels a sudden jolt of adrenaline lash down his legs.

“Hi there, straightie,” Kurt coos closing the door from outside. The sound of his teasing voice gets muffled by the cup he drinks from when he says the nickname. After he takes the sip, he moves the chocolate-colored cup away from his mouth; there is a trace of the brownish liquid left on his upper lip. Kurt licks at it softly, walking up to Blaine.

Blaine watches Kurt sit down beside him and hears his heart beating.

“Chocolate?” Kurt offers, watching Blaine with an unabashed, intense gaze.

Blaine nodes before the question even fully registers with him and Kurt hands out his cup of hot chocolate. Blaine takes a sip and licks at his own lips, staring down at the cup. Then he glances up at the neighboring house across the street.

They sit in quiet, listening to the muted melody wafting its way from inside the Hummel-Hudsons’ house.

_i’m the master pretender_  
_i’m wearing his face_  
_i’m wearing his ring_

“Neighbors must hate you,” Blaine smirks, chancing a glance at Kurt next to him—only to find Kurt facing him with his back to the balustrade, left knee bent and his foot resting at the same level they sit on. When Blaine looks up, Kurt’s gaze is already studying him.

Before Kurt responds, he riches with grabby hands as a clue for Blaine to return his cup.

“Dunno,” Kurt shrugs, taking another sip. His eyes, grey in the dim streetlight, never leave Blaine’s face. When Kurt runs his tongue over his upper lip again, Blaine turns back to face the road.

“I wouldn’t know who our neighbors are.”

“You guys didn’t grow up here?” Blaine frowns after a moment of silence.

Kurt sucks in a breath through his pointed nose and turns away, eyelids fluttering shut as he does so. Fiddling with his fingers, Blaine watches Kurt watch the road.

“We grew up in Lima,” Kurt sighs into the darkness.

Something in his high, gravelly voice stirs the warmth inside Blaine’s stomach. That same something doesn’t let Blaine look away. He hears the house behind them vibrate with a slow, crawly tune that keeps building and building up to something fierce and promisingly dark. A drawn-out, distant voice weaves itself into the cold music, reminding Blaine that of Foals. It’s beautiful, he thinks, studying Kurt’s pale silhouette.

_i’ll take your coat,_  
_then i’ll take your king_

Rather sudden and harsh, the music blasts louder when the front door is pushed open, again.

“Kurt, hey,” Finn stammers when he sees Blaine sitting next to him.

Kurt turns to send Finn a sweet smile.

“Um,” Finn treads at the doorstep, eyeing Blaine.

Sensing Finn’s discomfort, Blaine stands up and starts to brush the dust off of the back of his jeans.

“Jesse was looking for you and told me to tell you that if the hot chocolate is going to take that long, he doesn’t need it; he only needs you.”

At the sight of Finn’s solemn face as he racks his memory in an attempt to recite Jesse’s words to the letter, almost as if called out in class, Blaine can’t help but smile into his fist.

“Aw,” Kurt coos at Finn, flattered. He follows Blaine’s fashion and stands up too, slow and graceful. “Better go then. Before my favorite song is over.” 

*

That’s how Finn and Blaine become friends. When it happens, Blaine doesn’t attribute it to that time on the porch, of course. 

It’s just that Finn starts approaching him during the practice sessions more often. It’s just that he asks him out one day to go jogging down the Scioto Trail. Blaine finds himself accepting his invitations gladly.

As a rule, they talk a small talk, rarely touching upon anything of real value—which is more than okay with Blaine. Finn is exactly the type of person who is most interesting to talk to about the dullest stuff that there is. Sometimes they can’t avoid making minor references to their biographies, a couple of stories from their past here and there.

Blaine finds out more about Kurt, which, in all honesty, feels almost too fortunate to be true. At that time Blaine doesn’t acknowledge the funny swelling in his chest at every single piece of information about Kurt that Finn bestows upon him. Blaine doesn’t have a name for this feeling yet, doesn’t even know the _half_ of it, and secretly cherishes every little bit he gets.

He finds out Kurt and he study at the same place, the OSU School of Communication, except Kurt majors in communications whereas Blaine in journalism. Remotely, he wonders how come a personality as flamboyant as Kurt’s hasn’t caught his eye before—until Finn clarifies that Kurt does everything in his power to make as few appearances there as possible. “Skipping lectures and trying to get away with doing the bare minimum,” Finn’s voice is clipped, bare, and simple when he says that—just as the truth he speaks.

Blaine thinks he catches a note of sadness in it, which must be a pretty strong emotion to have managed to break through the natural austerity of Finn’s voice.

It’s the same voice Finn spoke in this one time he alluded to Kurt’s general lifestyle, light and carefree and—unequivocally put—promiscuous, with weekly one-night stands and reckless flirting and a history of countless flings that were never intended to last. Blaine holds no prejudice against promiscuity whatsoever, and somehow it seems to him that Finn doesn’t either; Blaine might just be wrong, but somehow it seems to him it’s the underpinning for Kurt’s choice of living that Finn has a problem with.

He must be very happy then to see Kurt and Jesse take their relationship to the next level and become exclusive, Blaine concludes as he and Finn stroll up the block one day on their way from the local grocery store.

Blaine gets to know more about Rachel, Finn’s girlfriend in New York; about his plans to spend the good half of his summer break at hers. He learns the backstory behind their romance, behind Brittany’s friendship—both tracing back to high school. Blaine learns a lot about the close ties they’ve all made in Glee Club.

He himself grew up surrounded by a very tight circle of a limited number of friends, only the closest ones, which is why it is both foreign and fascinating for him to listen to Finn talk about the occasional mess their boisterous pack would get themselves into. Most of all, Blaine harbors a distinct sense of adoration to the unconventionality and creativeness each of Finn’s friends seemed to embody and likes how virtually every member of that Glee Club went on to pursue their passion.

Kurt doesn’t catch Blaine and Finn together until a week and a half passed since that night on the porch.

Both of them chill in the Hummel-Hudsons’ living room watching football when Kurt passes them on his way out.

“Boys?” he calls, lingering behind the couch when he catches Finn having company.

At the flirty voice Blaine straightens up in his armchair, presses an elbow into the armrest, and turns in his seat. He props his chin up with a hand; his fingers tuck a curly strand behind his ear before he hides his mouth in his palm. This doesn’t do much for his wild head of curls, of course.

Kurt saunters deeper into the room, chin pressed to his chest, hands busy with spreading a hairspray over his perfect coiffure. He’s wearing a cozy blush knitted sweater that seems extremely soft to the touch and a pair of white tight-fitting pants. Finn and he exchange a couple of words; the world keeps moving, but Blaine doesn’t quite hear them.

“...waiting for me, but, oh well,” Kurt says in that light and _soft_ and high voice of his as he places the lid back onto the aerosol. Then, his voice regains this teasing quality as he strolls further into the front. “I’ve just been needing another pair of eyes,” he says as he circles Blaine’s armchair and stops in front of him, blocking the TV screen. “Blaine?” he calls teasingly.

Blaine—almost startled—slowly looks up from Kurt’s thin thighs.

“What do you think?” Kurt asks him, tilting his head to the side and raising his hands questioningly as he makes a lazy, graceful twirl.

Blaine stares up at him silently, the TV behind Kurt the only source of noise in the house. Eyes boring into Kurt’s piercingly blue ones, Blaine manages to hold his eye contact out of sheer conviction that Kurt must be joking.

But Kurt—oh, Kurt is _so_ far from joking.

“Blaine?” another voice calls from behind. Blaine breaks Kurt’s eye contact and quickly, glances back. “Hey, brother. Whatcha doing here?” Jesse asks him excitedly, walking into the room with a bouncy gait. 

Blaine tells him just that as they perform their good-old handshake, yet his friend—his friend hardly listens, gaze dark and shameless, as he ogles Kurt’s figure up and down, down and up, flexing his jaw visibly. He stands there, behind the back of Blaine’s armchair, swallowing a little too hard, his hold on Blaine’s hand a little too tight, and the only thing left for Blaine to do is hope _he_ didn’t look like this five seconds ago.

*

_highway run_  
_into the midnight sun_  
_wheels go round and round,_  
_you’re on my mind_

An adoring smile tugs at the corners of Blaine’s lips as he buckles up his seatbelt, turning to look at Finn in the driver’s seat. Finn pulls his van out of the driveway, then clicks his own seatbelt, and only then does he notice the face Blaine’s making at the song that switched on with the start of the engine.

“Rach and I sang it together at Regionals,” he smiles warmly, draping his hands over the steering wheel. “Every time I hear it, it’s like I’m back in High School. The senior year was by far the best year of my life, y’know.”

Blaine isn’t sure which year was the best year in his life. He’s not so sure he had one.

“They all would keep telling you how those times were gonna be the time of your life, and I’d be trying so hard, y’know. The right girlfriend, the right rep, until my senior year—I stopped. And _fuck_ if it wasn’t the best year ever,” Finn shakes his head with a satisfied beam, flicking his turn signal on. “By the way, we once competed with Warblers, you’ve never mentioned them—you’ve never been a part of?” he asks Blaine as they drag slowly down the parking lot at the grocery store.

“No,” Blaine says, shaking his head, then shrugs. “A cappella is not really my thing. And pop in general—well, you know that. Over my dead body.”

As Finn pulls up, Blaine shakes in a sudden fit of laughter, “Or, over my magic number of shots. Vodka, karaoke, and I—is a deadly combination.”

Finn kills the engine, leans back in his seat, eyes Blaine slyly.

“Noted.”

They shop for the barbecue. It was Jesse’s idea which Finn eagerly supported, offering their backyard as an option. At first, Blaine was rather skeptical, having read somewhere about the new Ohio Fire Code regulations. Kurt, however, had something else to say, laying on the couch with his feet in Jesse’s lap as all of them were chilling one of those times at Hummel-Hudson’s.

“Don’t worry, hon,” Kurt assured Blaine offhandedly without even taking his eyes off of what he was reading. “We’ve got enough space in our yard to fit three grills of that size.”

The sound of his bored, nonchalant voice put Blaine on the spot: Kurt hadn’t been participating in the conversation for the last hour.

“All without triggering your friends at the Fire Department,” Kurt added, sending a dry yet almost _adoring_ smile Blaine’s way. Blaine caught it, staring at Kurt blankly from across the room.

“What meat should we get?” Finn asks as they stroll towards the poultry section.

Blaine sifts through the cart packed with huge bags of chips, shrugging. “Dunno. I’m down with whatever you and Kurt get.”

“Kurt’s not a fan,” Finn responds, assessing the serve-over counter. “What about Jesse? Oh, by the way, Jesse will get us bear, right?”

“Sure,” Blaine nods, joining Finn at the display fridge. “Okay, this is our last stop.”

“Kurt also asked for a sorbet.”

*

_do it_  
_do it_  
_do it_  
_do it_  
_don’t wanna be your slave_

Blaine sips at his Diet Coke, flipping the steaks at the grill grates. The pleasant wind winnows at his curls; he licks the sweetness off of his lips, glancing up to where Finn, Santana, and Britt stand engaged in some animated conversation. Santana has a dandelion crown placed on top of her head, laughing at something Britt has just told Finn. Once Blaine catches sight of her smile, he can’t take his eyes off of it. Never has she _ever_ smiled like this—so open, so pure, radiant in its brightness and mesmerizing in its sincerity.

Honestly, Blaine didn’t know she had it in her. The yard is vibrant with the greenness unique to this time of the year and as she stands in the center of it with a bizarre garland against her dark hair and a dazzling smile on her face, Blaine simply doesn’t recognize his friend.

Just as careful, Blaine sheds an oblique glance to his left where Kurt and Jesse hang out by the van Finn rolled into the backyard. All of its doors have been left wide open, the trunk lid included, and a loud Rolling Stones’ improv blasts out from the car’s speakers. Jesse sits at the edge of the trunk, gazing up at Kurt standing between his legs. His hands feel around Kurt’s hipbones as Kurt sways relaxedly to the funky rhythm that must be deafening everything within the radius of their block.

Their neighbors definitely hate them.

Kurt wears an oversized denim jacket, his legs are tightly wrapped in dark jeans, his feet are two bright turquoise blobs—he’s shod in fashionably huge Nikes. Jesse gets up, hands sliding up under the fabric of Kurt’s jacket as he budges their noses together and stats to rock them both to the light beat. Relaxedly, Kurt lets his elbows rest on top of Jesse’s shoulders, hanging his forearms loosely as he throws his head back, mouthing what seem to be the only legitimate words in this song.

_don’t wanna be your slave_

Jesse makes their hips brush in the dance as his right hand crawls further up under Kurt’s jacket, stopping at his shoulder blades. His other hand slips down to rest on Kurt’s lower back. Jesse kisses his neck. With his eyes peacefully closed, Kurt cups the back of his boyfriend’s neck, thumb stroking the skin behind his earlobe. Out of the corner of his eye, Blaine watches Jesse nuzzle Kurt’s chin before—gently, slowly—pecking him on his soft lips. Or so they must be.

_don’t wanna be your slave_

And one more time, now slower; Jesse runs his tongue transversely, dipping it in between Kurt’s lips now parted. Jesse’s teeth lock onto Kurt’s bottom lip, then gently let it slip out. They never stop swaying as Kurt lets his slackened mouth deliciously fall open, inviting Jesse to do as he’s pleased. These teasing bites and nibbles proceed for another good minute before— _finally_ —Jesse collects Kurt in his arms to claim his mouth in a full kiss—a kiss so forceful and heated Kurt has to bend back a little under Jesse’s eagerness as he squeezes Kurt’s waist fervidly. Blaine watches Kurt pet the locks of Jesse’s hair in an almost _soothing_ manner, kissing him back weakly, calmly, yet contentedly.

What breaks the thrall that has Blaine’s eyes glued to the pair is the sound of his Diet Coke can cracking. When he looks down, he sees it crunched in his fist just as the smell of burning meat riches his nostrils.

*

Unfortunately, the spoiled meat is nothing compared to what almost costs him the next time he gets distracted.

The three of them are in Blaine’s car as Blaine drives them to his and Jesse’s apartment. It’s one of the Friday nights that Jesse and Kurt decided to spent at theirs, not at Kurt’s. Blaine, of course, had no business partaking in what the two were intending to do once inside—nor _was he thinking about it_. The only plan he had for that night was to spend it locked up in his room with his headphones on and music turned up loud.

He didn’t mind giving his friends a ride, though.

Not long after the current song fades into silence, the car starts to pulse with the new, all-too-familiar beat, slow but vigorous. Without taking his attention off of the road, Blaine reaches out for his iPhone streaming the music.

“Sorry, guys,” he shouts over the throb of the bass. In the backseat, Kurt and Jesse are teasing each other with frisky pecks and breathy laughs. “I’ll find something fresh,” Blaine lets them know as he starts scrolling through his playlist.

Picking a song with Kurt and Jesse in the car was never easy: Kurt would carp coquettishly every time Blaine decided to go with something of rock classics and Jesse would find fault with every ambient piece he picked.

“Don’t,” Kurt says from behind in that same playful voice in which he was just flirting with Jesse. Suddenly, Blaine feels Kurt’s cold, delicate fingers wrapped around his wrist. “Keep it.”

The corners of Blaine’s lips tense up; he lets his iPhone slip out of his hand without Kurt’s hold on his wrist loosening. He _feels_ Kurt squeeze him softly. Those two seconds that his cell phone falls back onto the passenger’s seat next to him while Kurt unwinds his fingers and lets go of his hand seem to slow the time down. It feels like an awful long until Blaine’s hand finds its way back to the steering wheel.

_have you got color in your cheeks?_

The car is filled with a rich harmony of two other voices on top of the song’s vocals as Kurt and Jesse dive headlong into singing along. Blaine smiles at the sound, flicking the turn signal on.

_have you no idea that you’re in deep?_  
_i’ve dreamt about you nearly_  
_every night this week_

Blaine glances up into his rear view and sees two of them squirm and gesture as they mimic a performance. Jesse serenades Kurt, wiggling his eyebrows; Kurt has his head thrown back, staring up at the ceiling with a mad smile on his lips. It doesn’t take Jesse long to give up singing and nuzzle the exposed curve of Kurt’s neck instead, taking playful bites at his pale skin. Blaine looks away.

However, the next thing he hears is the chorus come up and Kurt take a higher note, blending in together with the back vocals in this song. Astonished, Blaine swivels his gaze back to the mirror where Kurt keeps singing and Jesse keeps kissing his neck until his mouth slides its way up to Kurt’s ear; Kurt grabs his tenacious jaw and turns to sing the words straight into his mouth, teasing him.

Blaine doesn’t notice the moment when he’s let himself gaze too long and he doesn’t see the car in front of him switch its brake lights on as it starts to slow down at the next red. Kurt laughs into Jesse’s eager mouth and lets his own jaw fall open; Jesse starts to crawl on top of him, pushing Kurt’s upper body back into the seat.

Only he doesn’t make it.

The rapidly approaching red lights somehow register in the corner of Blaine’s eye and, instinctually, he squeezes the life out of his brakes, throwing the car into an abrupt, screeching halt.

“Fuck,” Blaine growls through gritted teeth after he manages to stop the car _seconds_ before they bump into the other car’s rear bumper. Cheeks flushed with a sudden rush of adrenaline, Blaine gestures a sincere apology to the driver in front of him, then presses his hands into the steering wheel and sinks low into his seat.

Kurt hides his forehead in the crane of Jesse’s neck; Jesse turns his head back to Kurt, soothingly kisses Kurt’s ear, and no one sees the way Kurt’s chest shakes with quiet laughter.


	2. coffee, pizza, cigarettes, and Finn the Klaine-meister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ([music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfCJHSOib1deVvEwnw-cNcayc_owc4Zy))

“Good morning, Blaine,” is the first thing Blaine hears when he steps into the kitchen the next morning. “Did you sleep well?” Kurt asks teasingly.

He’s sitting at the island, reading something on his Kindle with a mug of coffee in his hand—Blaine gleans as much by the scent pervading the room.

Blaine’s yawn dies halfway inside his throat; seeing Kurt all dressed up and perfectly coiffed suddenly makes him feel underdressed, wearing nothing but sweatpants and his time-worn Dalton T-shirt (with an emblem so faded it’s barely recognizable.) Blaine forces a nervous smile and scratches the back of his curly head. Self-consciously, he walks up to the fridge, pulls the door open, and gets a mere bottle of water, his appetite suddenly gone.

“Yep. You?” Blaine asks before taking a swig. Kurt takes a sip too before he bites at his upper lip, looking past Blaine, somewhat distracted.

“Yep,” he echoes him distantly. “Jesse went off to meet up with his parents.”

Blaine knows. Blaine knew Jesse’s parents were in town and that he’d promised to keep them company that day that they stopped by on their way south.

Blaine just didn’t expect Kurt to stay.

Kurt puts his mug down before gracefully sliding off the stool and putting the Kindle in his bag. There is a breath of resolution to his movements and Blaine watches him curiously from where he stands by the counter sipping his water. Kurt picks up his emptied cup and comes up to Blaine. Close.

For a moment, Kurt just stands there in front of him, almost as if waiting for something to happen. Blaine stares at him in blank confusion.

The next thing he knows—he’s swallowing down as Kurt steps intimately closer, and—unprepared—is bending back a bit, feeling himself press into the edge of the sink. His heart skips a beat as his frantic eyes search Kurt’s face for some kind of explanation. What they find instead is the perfect curvature of Kurt’s eyebrows, the crystal limpidity of his blue eyes, and the captivating _softness_ of his skin. The kind of delicious softness that only comes with a long-established moisturizing routine and that makes the tips of Blaine’s fingertips tingle without even having to touch it.

And it’s either Blaine’s body sets itself on fire or _their legs touch_ before—a loud _clank_ behind Blaine’s back; Blaine twists where Kurt has him cornered to glance down into the sink, almost pressing their chests together in the process, and sees the cup Kurt just put there.

“Oh...m’sorry,” Blaine mumbles sheepishly.

For a second or two Kurt keeps standing there, watching the line of Blaine’s jaw with an inscrutable expression, Blaine still halfway turned away from him. Kurt’s fingers squeeze the edge of the sink to the point of his knuckles turning white before—he pushes away, letting Blaine have his personal space back.

When Blaine turns to look at him, Kurt’s stepping away. The tension in the air wanes proportionally to the growth in space between them. On his way out, Kurt grabs his bag, lets out a breathy sigh, and tells Blaine, “Get dressed.”

*

Kurt takes Blaine to have breakfast at his favorite place. The café is cozy and modest; they’re one of the earliest customers that Saturday, and it’s peacefully quiet when they first get there.

Blaine looks around, taking in the abstract lines and streaks of paint on the walls—three of them colored and one having a faux brickwork—exposed ducts, large windows. Outside Blaine can see the avenue bathing in the early-morning sun.

Blaine watches Kurt’s knife and fork cleave into some sophisticated vegetarian dish the name of which Blaine wouldn’t have remembered even if he tried. He guesses it’s some kind of seared mini-rolls that have carefully arranged greens and vegetables around them as well a small cup of hummus squeezed nearby. Blaine himself wasn’t hungry, his stomach churning, so he simply got himself a cup of tea.

He felt surreal sitting across from Kurt as they were ordering, watching Kurt talk to the waiter in a genteel voice that _still_ couldn’t quite break away from that coquettish hint in it as Kurt swayed his leg relaxedly.

“When you realize just the mistake you’ve made I will be more than happy to share with you,” Kurt hums to him in regards to his almost-lack-of order before he bites at his carrot dipped in hummus.

Unsure, Blaine makes a slight nod and leans down to take a sip of his steaming hot tea. The café is filled with a soft blues motif, peculiar in its monotony with the equally faint, almost indistinguishable lyrics.

_and maybe it was nothing_  
_too little too late_

When Kurt sends the rest of his slice into his mouth, he leans back in his seat and glances up at Blaine in a way that’s different from his usually piercing gazes. It’s soft and careful and almost _intimate_ —yet Blaine’s clueless, his jaw propped up by his hand, eyes boring into his cup, teeth worrying his lips. Kurt studies him openly, tilting his head to side, taking in Blaine’s curly head of hair.

When Blaine looks up and their eyes meet, he finds himself unable to look away. Holding this heated eye contact, Blaine feels his ears flush. And then something in Kurt’s eyes changes, a smile touches his delicately carved lips.

“So tell me, Blaine,” he says in a sweet, playful voice; his eyes trace the movement of his own hand that dunks one of the slim celery slices into hummus.

Blaine could tell him anything.

“What was it like studying in a school for boys?”

There is nothing out of the ordinary with this question— _it need not be_ , yet the inflection of Kurt’s silky voice when he asks it could as well make Blaine’s face go red. As if there _is_ some kind of _there_ there—in the same way that, ever since Kurt became a part of his life, Blaine hasn’t been able to shake off this gnawing feeling that there was something worth blushing for that he just didn’t know about himself yet.

He clears his throat gruffly, looks down at his cup, and licks his lips, fighting the inexplicable smile.

“Not bad,” he responds, nodding as he lifts the cup up to his mouth.

“Not bad?” Kurt asks him with a smile, shifting in his seat as he leans forward to rest his elbow on the table surface, then takes an impish bite at his celery slice.

“Not bad,” Blaine echoes after he swallows, putting his cup down and glancing up at Kurt. For a couple of seconds they just _smile_ at each other knowingly and this is fucking _insanity_.

“Mhm,” Kurt hums contentedly as he chews, letting his eyelids flutter shut. “Sometimes I want to go back.”

Blaine arches an eyebrow, eyeing Kurt.

“Not that there was a second I spent _not_ wanting to leave that cow town and never look back,” he clarifies in a biting tone. “But it was nice not knowing what’ll happen. What _exactly_ will happen.”

Kurt stirs his thick hummus with a carrot slice. Blaine listens to him intently.

“We had the world at our feet,” Kurt says and Blaine can effortlessly picture the _we_ Kurt is talking about. 

After all of Finn’s references to his and Kurt’s mutual past he’s made in passing (which, more often than not, had a tendency to branch off into the full-fledged stories of their own,) Blaine feels as if he’s been there to witness them all himself.

“Of course, it was almost like the whole world and none of it at once, but there was something about it.”

Blaine nods. And smiles.

*

When Blaine gets the taste of what it feels like to talk to Kurt, he can’t stop. In the end, he steals a few carrot slices from Kurt’s plate as well as one mini-roll that, to his surprise, turns out weirdly delicious. Kurt pays for Blaine’s tea which Blaine finds it adorable. Even the way Kurt can’t quite quell his flirtatious side when speaking to the staff Blaine finds adorable.

This café doesn’t end up being their last stop that day. When they step out, Blaine shoves his hands into his back pockets and faces the way leading home, ready to head back—yet Kurt grabs him by his elbow and tugs him in the opposite direction. So they set out on a long Downtown walk that consists of light, naturally-coming conversations, pleasant silence, gleeful laughter, and the morning sun nuzzling their faces.

Blaine facepalms when he’s laughed for so long his abs start to hurt and his eyes start to water. He can’t quite believe the joy coursing through his body and tingling at his insides, doesn’t know what to _do_ about it and simply turns to glance at Kurt, looking at him with a fond tilt of his head as they walk.

Their last stop is a coffee shop; Kurt’s the first to make an order during which he flirts with barista shamelessly and to the common question _‘What’s your name?’_ purrs sweetly, “Blaine.” Blaine watches him the whole time and feels something twist in his stomach at the way Kurt says his name.

Blaine is next in line and he musters up his best charm, putting on an equally flirtatious performance before introducing himself as Kurt.

“I’m starting to suspect you were secretly attending acting classes on top of the Glee Club,” Blaine tells Kurt jokingly when they sink into the soft cushions on the couch by the open window. There is enough space between their bodies for them not to feel each other’s warmth as they wait for their orders. 

Kurt hums, acknowledging Blaine’s remark, seemingly lost in his thoughts; his index finger traces the outline of his upper lip.

“No,” Kurt says when enough time has passed for Blaine to let go of what he said and almost forget about it. Kurt shakes his head and turns to look at him. “I just really enjoyed Broadway shows.”

Blaine turns to look into Kurt’s face, a bit timid and a lot caring. Kurt speaks in an open, leisurely voice that without its usual coquettish quality feels...bare, somehow. Kurt shrugs indifferently, pursing his lips.

“Rach and I were going to go study dramatic arts, together. At NYADA, if you’re familiar.”

This is the part Finn’s never told Blaine. Blaine frowns; NYADA is precisely the place Rachel is at the moment. Just as closely as Blaine is watching Kurt, Kurt’s watching him.

“Ask me.”

Blaine looks up into his blue eyes, gazes into them for a long time, and when he opens his mouth, he asks something else.

“Why didn’t you go with him?”

Blaine knew about Jesse’s plans to offer Kurt to say hi to his family and Blaine knew how much it would’ve meant for him. Before Blaine even met Kurt, he knew how fast his friend had fallen for him and how deep.

A brand new expression takes over Kurt’s features as he straightens up his neck, studying Blaine’s face in a way so unpinnable it’s baffling. As if it’s a wonder Blaine sees in Kurt’s eyes, but he can’t be sure.

“He wanted me to that much?” Kurt asks quietly, wary yet awed all at once, eyes searching Blaine’s eyes.

“Blaine?” calls the barista, causing Blaine to glance his way sharply. “Your grand non-fat mocha, please.”

Before he starts to stand up and before the name of the order even registers with him, Kurt is already on his feet, trying to squeeze in between Blaine’s knees and the coffee table. Blaine looks up at him, shuffling his calves closer to the couch, as Kurt flashes him a smile, tousling Blaine’s head of curls.

“I’m afraid you, Mr. Hummel, will have to wait.”

*

From this day onward, Blaine decides that this is what it was all along. This was what he has been pining for, Kurt’s _friendship_. No wonder he was so afraid to admit this to his own self; Kurt was the first guy Blaine felt a _longing_ to become friends with, the absolute _need_ to have him in his life. No doubt the controversy of it scared Blaine. No doubt he didn’t let his mind go there for as long as he has—in fear of chancing upon something else about himself in the process.

It’s just that Kurt has a unique personality, a _remarkable_ personality, and for Blaine, as someone with a heart of a writer, it’s easy to fall for everything remarkable, is all.

The realization is a weight off his shoulders he didn’t know he was carrying all this time.

Kurt starts to join Blaine and Finn more often; once the three of them even do groceries. It feels so warm and family-like; Blaine loves being in the company of these two, far more so than when their trio is accompanied by Jesse. Blaine ascribes this preference of his to Kurt ceasing to participate in the conversation once Jesse’s around, his mouth always busy with kissing or flirting. As callously as it may sound, Kurt just...loses his value to Blaine when he becomes like that. Kurt just ceases being Kurt.

As callously as it may have sounded, Blaine was far more at peace with this explanation than having to dig any deeper and unveil things tenfold more disturbing.

One time Kurt, Finn, and Blaine arrive at Hummel-Hudson’s half an hour before the start of their practice. Blaine sits down on the steps by the garage door leading inside the house. Acoustic guitar in his arms, he lets himself a peaceful moment of solitary improvisation.

Finn is inside watching the game on TV; not long after Blaine starts playing, Kurt emerges in the doorway at the beautiful sound. That day Kurt comments on Blaine’s playing for the first time.

Sits down next to him; Blaine turns to face him as they both snuggle on the narrow stairs, knees touching. Blaine keeps strumming a soft, euphonious sequence of chords, all while upholding a hushed conversation with Kurt.

He doesn’t notice when his fingers fall back into reprising the piece he’s composed a while back, the pattern still fresh in his mind. Kurt doesn’t look at him when he plays; his eyes are distant and unfocused, staring off into the dark corner in the room. The melody is just the perfect mixture of smooth, edgy, and leisurely; knowing it by heart, Blaine doesn’t need to watch his hands. He absently watches Kurt’s thighs instead, wrapped in dark denim, as he half-recites, half-sings the lyrics.

His lyrics never overshadow his music, always a mere complement to it, just audible enough to help shape the melody where it’s rough around the edges.

When Blaine starts to sing, Kurt looks down at his cup of hot chocolate, his hold on the ceramic mug tightening.

When Blaine is done, Kurt takes a small sip, then turns to look at him. Blaine glances up from where his fingers went back to the quiet extemporization. The unforgiving fierceness of Kurt’s gaze makes Blaine’s playing fade away into a startled silence.

“Why are you here?” Kurt asks him then.

Blaine’s never seen him like that. His blue eyes are turbid with painful seriousness and a ruthless demand to know. Being on the receiving end of this gaze, Blaine can feel it quickly engulf his chest before _crushing_ it the way Blaine crushed that Coke two weeks ago.

“Why are _you_ here?” Blaine barely hears himself asking as he searches Kurt’s eyes that—suddenly—glaze over with a dark, unreadable guise. Kurt’s gaze keeps searing into Blaine with the same intensity, if not greater.

 _“Kurt!”_ both of them hear Jesse’s singsong voice call him from the hall inside; there’s a noise of Santana’s, Brittany’s, and Finn’s voices talking in the background. Everybody’s here.

Blaine glances to his right through the empty doorway, feeling a little pang of disappointment. Meanwhile, Kurt doesn’t acknowledge his name being called, never taking his heavy eyes off Blaine.

Blaine hears Jesse ask Finn where Kurt is and Finn say he doesn’t know. Unsure, Blaine turns back to Kurt, and for the next ten seconds, they simply gaze at each other in silence.

Both hear Jesse ask where Blaine is and Finn tell him he doesn’t know that either. 

*

In the end, Blaine manages to ride these lies out for a whole week onward.

The thing that does it for him, the thing that becomes his last straw, is so ridiculous he would’ve laughed if it didn’t make him want to cry.

That Friday night their group sets out on a movie marathon and decide to order pizza. Finn gave Blaine a ride on their way to the practice (since both of them had been hanging out anyway) and afterward, Britt and Santana agreed to drop Blaine off at his apartment on their own way home. As a result, he was cuffed to the girls.

He might’ve left earlier if he’d had his car with him.

They order three different pizzas: one for Blaine and Santana, one for Jesse and Kurt, and one for Brittany and Finn—just the way it happens to be in accordance to their likings. Blaine sits on the couch, squeezed in between Santana and Jesse; Kurt and Britt chill at the soft carpet in front of them; Finn rests in the armchair to their left. As they wait for the pizza, watching the movie, Jesse massages the back of Kurt’s neck, whispering something sweet and low into his ear; Finn gobbles a bag of chips, Santana braids Brittany’s blond hair.

For some reason, Blaine finds it hard to concentrate on the movie and fiddles with his iPhone instead, surfing social nets. When delivery guy arrives, Jesse, being the closest to the door, complies to go get it.

“My pizzawinner,” Kurt purrs teasingly, watching Jesse press kisses to the back of Kurt’s hands as he gets up from behind. Blaine tucks his right ankle under his right thigh as soon as he gets more room.

Finn reaches for the remote and pauses the movie while Jesse disappears into the hallway.

“So Frankenteen, when are you leaving to go bang your girlfriend in New York?”

Blaine glares at Santana next to him; Kurt lets out a sweet yawn.

“Why thanks, Santana, for caring so much about my sex life. Not very soon: first we’ve decided she’ll visit me here.”

“Rachel’s coming?” Kurt asks suddenly, the last trace of playfulness flees his voice.

Blaine watches the side of Kurt’s face and feels as if he can _feel_ everything that there is to be experienced by Kurt in this moment. Blaine doesn’t know where such confidence comes from because Kurt’s face is void of any emotion, perfectly blank—and not in a way that’s inviting.

In a way that makes Finn’s face lose its color as well.

“Yeah,” Finn says flatly. “I was going to tell you, sorry.”

Kurt’s sheer gaze seems to be doing a fantastic job of coercing all the right answers from him.

“In two weeks,” Finn says. “Right when her contract with her landlady expires. We’ll only spend here a week tops and then ’ll go to Lima. Glee guys are talking about throwing our own mini Homecoming—on the 4th of July. To bring our families together and all,“ Finn rattles on. “And then Rach and I will go to New York. We haven’t figured out where to stay yet, but...”

“Jesus, Hummel,” Santana chimes in. “Is she even worse than you? That he feels like explaining his ass off the wagon,” she muses dryly, doing Brittany’s hair with gentle fingers.

As far as Blaine has been able to garner from Finn’s stories, Rachel is the only friend Kurt kept since high school—and is deemed a relatively close friend at that. Santana’s witty remark, however, seems to break some of the tension, making Kurt strain a sarcastic smile her way and leave it, turning back to look at his legs.

And the way the back of his neck stretches, baring itself to Blaine, as Kurt—quite literally—hangs his head, makes him for a second look—small, _vulnerable_ and Blaine doesn’t quite know if the sight is more adorable or heartbreaking. Blaine’s heart aches with a sudden need to say something, be with Kurt in some ineffable way—but before he even starts to open his mouth, Jesse strides back with a stack of three pizza boxes.

And, just like that, Kurt turns to look up at Jesse with no signs of his and Finn’s recent encounter on his face. Just a genuine smile as he reaches out for their box.

“Pizza!” Brittany proclaims, as if to make it official.

It happens when Blaine is halfway through his second slice. Kurt is full pretty quickly and puts his sparsely pecked slice away, back into the box.

“Those in favor of switching, guys?” Jesse asks with his mouth full. 

Everyone shrugs in agreement and starts sharing. Some reach out for Britt’s and Finn’s box at the coffee table, some reach for Kurt’s and Jesse’s one on the floor; Brittany kindly offers Finn what’s left of her own slice, which earns her a confused frown on Finn’s part. Kurt lets his head drop back onto the edge of the sofa, gazing up at Blaine and Santana.

“Which one of you will let me take a bite?”

Santana sucks on her delicate fingers and happily holds out what’s left of her slice—the crust—above Kurt’s head, wiggling it like a treat for a doggie.

Kurt rolls his eyes, hauls himself up, and turns to face Blaine. Blaine freezes; he’s pretty sure he forgets how to eat.

One of Kurt’s hands cups Blaine’s knee for better leverage; Blaine feels Kurt’s palm soft and warm against the denim of his jeans. Kurt opens his mouth in a childlike manner and leans in to catch the slice Blaine holds in his hand, _next to his own mouth_. Blaine swallows his poorly chewed mouthful, watching Kurt with his hazel eyes now brown and glazed with heaviness.

Kurt cleaves into Blaine’s pizza with his dainty teeth—Blaine’s never seen his teeth before—then tugs at the slice Blaine holds, pulling away, and then his rosy tongue starts to _shamelessly_ pick up the threads of cheese that threaten to droop down from Blaine’s piece. Blaine keeps watching when Kurt, chewing with mouth now carefully closed, regards Blaine with a coy smile, pets his knee in thanks, and slides back down into the cocoon of Jesse’s legs, as gracefully as he climbed up.

*

 _“I don’t usually go all in,”_ Santana picks up from the get-go, singing along from where she sits in the front passenger’s seat of Britt’s car with a night road racing towards them.

 _“Babe,”_ Brittany follows suit from behind the steering wheel.

 _“Made me lose more than I could win. Babe,”_ Santana sings, waving her index finger at Britt in a diva fashion. Both girls burst out laughing as they rock to the pulse of the bass resonating throughout the car, interfering with their heartbeats.

This manages to draw Blaine out of the trance he spent the whole ride under, sitting in the backseat, quiet, glassy-eyes, and completely out of it. 

Seeing the pair light up to the _definition_ of a pop song that came up on the radio, Blaine can’t help a soft smile as he eyes them discreetly from behind.

_you_  
_keep_  
_robbing my heart like a bank_  
_(and i only got myself to blame)_  
_you keep_  
_robbing my heart like a bank_  


_“No thank you,”_ Santana sings, bringing her hands together for a _clap_.

 _“No thank you,”_ Brittany echoes, spinning the steering wheel.

For the first time since the moment Britt burst the door open into Blaine’s life, he suddenly realizes that it’s her.

Watching Santana and her interact as the light and the shadows from the passing street lamps flit across at their smiling faces, Blaine doesn’t recognize the girl he used to date half a year ago.

Jesse was the one who introduced him to Santana when he and Blaine first moved in. By far, Jesse’s friendship was the luckiest one Blaine’s ever had the pleasure of earning. He would’ve never met either Santana _or_ Kurt and Finn if it wasn’t for J.

To this day Blaine remembers how adamant Jesse was about his no-screwing policy upon the band’s formation, and how Santana couldn’t care less the very next day as she pushed Blaine into the bed. Blaine loved that about her, how dauntless she was, how easily she could detach herself from people that were nothing but a background noise in her life.

But this Santana, the laughing-with-her-eyes-sparking Santana, the rocking-to-the-silly-love-songs Santana, Blaine loved so much more. This Santana, he realized then, reminded him of himself that day by the coffee shop when he felt so much he didn’t know what to _do_ with it.

But somehow Blaine knew that, if he were to say anything at all, make the tiniest bit of sound regarding this new Santana—he would jeopardize all of it.

Which is why all he did was sit quietly in the backseat and watch them from afar like a ghost, stealing glances in the rear view that had Brittany’s own radiant smile beaming in the dark.

_i’m not above love_  
_i just ran out of_  
_it_

“Blaine, is it this turn or next?” Britt asks him over the loud music, glancing at him in the mirror.

“You can drop me off right here, I’ll walk,” Blaine tells her, squeezing the back of her seat.

“Okay,” she says, watching the road while she pulls up to the side. “Out, out, out,” she shoos him as soon as the car halts, sending a warm smile his way.

Blaine laughs while Santana cheers up, “Yeah, get your ass out of here; we’re about to have our girl time on.”

He’s never heard Santana’s voice laced with such mirth and tenderness as she tells him to get lost.

*

He wished a good dose of fresh air right before bed really did ensure a healthier sleep. He would’ve given up everything for it to be true.

But that night he wakes up. His mind still fuzzy from the sleep, he sits up, kicks the covers off, and gets up from his bed. As he makes a drowsy way for his door in the dark, he only has one thing on his mind— _bathroom,_ _now_.

...Until he reaches out for the doorknob and the sound of somebody _moaning_ on the other side stops him dead in his tracks.

Just like that, the last vestige of dizziness and sleepiness is out the window; Blaine’s back tautens and he holds his breath, frozen by the door.

He hears Jesse growl. He hears Kurt laugh a soft, breathy laugh as both of them pant in a what seem to be rocking movements on the couch less than _ten feet away from Blaine’s room_.

That laugh, that sweet and cocky and yet somehow still warmhearted laugh of Kurt’s, pierces into Blaine’s ears, claws into Blaine’s _heart_ and ripples down through his insides until it reaches his _crotch_.

Blaine swallows down the rancid dryness in his mouth after those few hours of sleep he got. Round-eyed, he stares at the wooden door in front of him, his suddenly cold fingers clutching the knob.

They don’t stop. Jesse keeps grumbling something unintelligible, more sighs and groans than actual words, but when he moans—it’s all grunts and whines and Blaine feels his heart jump at those sounds in a dead, ugly sensation.

When _Kurt_ lets himself moan—considerably less often, but just as rich and wanton in sound—he does so in pure bliss, _his voice_ is a pure _bliss_ , rotund and high and _electrifying_ in its breathlessness; Blaine forces his eyes shut and has to squeeze the eyelids _tighter_ still with each of the next sounds Kurt makes.

Blaine can hear the soft squeaking of the couch they are _having sex on,_ can hear exactly when they kiss, huffing and puffing hotly into each other’s mouths, and when they throw their heads back, chests rumbling with deep, shaking moans, _fuck_.

Blaine presses his knees and thighs together, puts a fist to the door as softly as he can manage and—feels the tears of desperation prick his eyes under his lids.

He needed to get to the bathroom so freaking much.

And now he doesn’t fucking know what he needs, standing there with his legs buckling, his knees sinking to the floor as he grips himself through his boxers with one hand and pushes into the door with the other.

He doesn’t get what they’re doing here. They were planning to stay at Kurt’s, this is why Santana and Britt were the ones to drop Blaine off. Blaine hangs his head and winces at the painfully twisting sensation in his belly and his bladder and his _ballsack_ , of all places—and he _doesn’t fucking understand._

Kneeling in a black tank top and boxers, Blaine strains his muscles, his whole body tensing in an attempt to thwart something he hasn’t even put a name to; his chest heaves, his biceps brawny and outlined as he exerts himself to the point of the ringing in his ears.

He stops, and breathes. His chest starts to shake. Shoulders tremble and Blaine doesn’t quite notice the moment he lets himself _feel_ , lets himself experience release—if in no other way but to _cry_ , drily, quietly, more gasps than actual tears, trying to stifle even those against the breathy moans and chokes Kurt and Jesse keep making behind that door.

Just thinking about it makes Blaine’s chest shake harder, with something else now—hysteria, laughter—as he lets go of the door to pinch the bridge his nose instead, laughing at his own pathetic ass sitting at the floor with no way of stepping outside to go _pee_ and no clue about the _fuck_ is going on with his body.

But when he notices how, with each whine of Kurt’s, he feels himself clench where he shouldn’t and _twitch_ where he shouldn’t, he’s _this_ close to covering his ears like a child just to escape the madness. It’s encompassing him, tightening its hold on his neck and his heart all at once—until at some point, _mortified,_ Blaine catches himself letting out small, labored _whines_ with each of the muffled ones _Kurt_ is making behind this door.

Not giving a flying fuck about _any_ of this anymore, Blaine lurches away from the door, crawls in the dark, graceless and frantic, stumbles up to rake through the mess on his nightstand with shaking hands. Heart racing, he finds his iPhone and his earbuds and plunges into his bed, under his covers, under his pillow—not caring for the noise he’s making for a single second.

In the dark, under his pillow, with unstable fingers, he must’ve taken the world’s record long time to plug the earphones into the socket. As soon as it’s done, Blaine scrolls his playlist rapidly for the first hardcore song he finds, presses play, then boosts the volume up to the maximum. He closes his eyes, blocks his iPhone a superfluous number of times, curls into the fetal position, hugs his knees to his chest, and lets the blasting pulse of the sturdy, vivid rhythm consume him.

_oh i’ve been a hatchet_  
_oh i’ve been lying_  
_right from the paddle_  
_of blood i’ve been taken_

The rest of the night Blaine spends shaking in cold sweat, trying to get rid of the ache left smoldering somewhere deep inside his stomach.

He doesn’t step outside to go to the bathroom until the wee hours, and by the sunrise—he’s gone. He’s gone until late night.

*

“Hey, Blaine,” Jesse says, picking up an apple from the fruit basket.

Blaine looks up from his MacBook where he’s scrolling through the _Freelancer_ projects.

“Since you’re sitting this one out, can I take your guitar?” Jesse asks, shoving the apple into the pocket of his leather jacket.

Blaine nods, quiet and careful, eyeing his friend askance.

“Thanks, brother,” Jesse says as he shrugs the strap of Blaine’s guitar onto his shoulder, then raises a hand goodbye. “Take care,” he nods at Blaine. “And don’t cram yourself into dying,” he flashes a smug, broad smile at Blaine as he pulls the front door open.

A small but hopefully convincing smile tugs at Blaine’s own mouth as he returns the nod; he finds some part of him wanting Jesse to hurry up and close the door from outside.

When Jesse does just that, Blaine lets out a breath he was holding, cold comfort tingling his thighs, as he turns back to the screen.

But who is he kidding? It’s not like he will magically regain his ability to concentrate—the one he has particularly sucked at over the course of this past week, reading the same freaking paragraph over and over and over again. And just when he’s managed those five arduous lines, the bell rings, scattering Blaine’s attention away.

Blaine gets up and flashes an absent glance at the countertop where Jesse would always leave his keys, but it’s empty. Nonetheless, Blaine doesn’t think twice about it as he walks up to the door and opens it.

It’s Kurt.

There’s a beat; Blaine lets himself breathe out slowly, inaudibly, as his eyes brush down Kurt’s slim figure. They haven’t seen each other since the movie night. Blaine’s been trying to gently turn down all of Finn’s invitations to hang out, the two of them or otherwise. Despite the fact that seven days isn’t that long of a time period—for Blaine, this past week has been the longest week in his entire life.

Because looking now at Kurt, his denim jacket from that day at the barbecue, his pale hands neatly tucked inside its pockets, and a cotton crew-neck T-shirt peeking from underneath—Blaine feels as if it’s been forever.

Kurt’s head is tilted to the side, his hair swept up into a coiffure so everlastingly perfect it _hurts_ , the crisp blue of his eyes highlighted by the pastel denim as they watch Blaine. Level and quiet, as if patiently waiting for when Blaine is ready to face them.

“Hi,” Blaine is the first to say, clearing his throat, leaning on the door that he holds open. “Jesse’s just left.”

Kurt keeps gazing at him, gesturing with his hands still inside his pockets—as if pointing at some obvious fact Blaine’s missing.

 _“Exactly,”_ Kurt breaks the silence when Blaine doesn’t, and suddenly strides inside, inviting himself in.

Caught off guard, Blaine barely has enough time to react and step out of Kurt’s way before their bodies brush.

“Why are you still here?” comes Kurt’s question as he makes his confident way inside, Blaine’s eyes tracing his back dumbly.

Blaine’s absent hand pushes the front door shut.

“I’m behind in school,” Blaine hears himself mumble in his defense the first thing that comes to mind.

Kurt pulls a stool out by the island and straddles it. It’s like he literally lets whatever Blaine’s just said wash over and right through him—without acknowledging Blaine in the slightest.

Blaine watches Kurt’s hand slide under the flap of his jacket and into his back pocket to fish out his iPhone.

Standing in the middle of the room in his sweats and a T-shirt, Blaine stares at Kurt fiddling with his iPhone as nonchalantly as ever, snubbing Blaine in the most outright manner. The only thing disturbing the stark silence between them is the clicking sound of Kurt’s iPhone as he types.

Everything about Kurt’s firmly held posture seems to denote his determined refusal to leave without him. And when the quiet has dragged on for too long, the sound of Kurt’s typing dies out and a pair of impatient blue eyes cleaves into Blaine’s lost ones. 

Kurt doesn’t need to voice the patent question in his eyes that demands to know why Blaine is still here. The intensity of Kurt’s gaze seems to spur Blaine into action as it is—before Blaine knows it, he’s heading to his room to change.

Face deadpan, Kurt turns his gaze to his phone as he goes back to texting.

*

“Did you drive here or...?” Blaine asks Kurt in a soft voice as they jog down the stairs. Kurt is ahead of him.

“Nope.”

“Then we’ll take my car?” Blaine figures when they reach the first floor. Kurt makes a swift turn for another flight of stairs leading—Kurt knows—to an underground car park.

“Yep,” Kurt says.

When Blaine presses the unlock button on his keys, Kurt stops abruptly—and spins to face Blaine. Unprepared, Blaine stumbles into him, then takes a few startled steps back. Kurt’s lips curve into a subtle moue as he holds out a hand.

“I’ll drive.”

Unsure, Blaine looks up at him as he hands him over the keys, feeling when the warmth spark between their skin when their fingers touch.

Kurt turns back to the car and circles the vehicle, giving in to a private smile.

“We’ve all seen how easily you get distracted,” he points out in a low, playful voice before he pulls the driver’s door open and dives inside.

Blaine freezes, watching the top of Kurt’s head disappear under the roof of Blaine’s car. He tries to swallow around the thickness in his throat.

When they pull up at the sharp crest of the inclined driveway, Kurt glancing both ways before making a turn, Blaine reaches out to put something on.

Yet before his hand even makes it to the USB cable, he gets a slap on the wrist.

“Shush,” Kurt intervenes. “He who’s behind the wheel calls the tune.” He holds out his own iPhone, keeping his eyes on the road.

Blaine lets out a voiceless chuckle, watching Kurt at moments when his attention should really be going to his hands as they blindly plug Kurt’s cell phone in. He’s been curious as to what kind of music Kurt listens to for a while now.

They find themselves swishing down the half-emptied road; a warm, ticklish wind caressing their faces as they drive off into the sunset with the windows rolled down. The air around them seems to be thick with the evening mist that’s been left behind by another hot day in the city. Or, in the parks alongside the city’s perimeter, Blaine guesses as he watches the setting sun ruddy all this smoke sprawling along the horizon.

This sight spurs an odd feeling of incompleteness, the feeling Blaine’d often get at the evenfall; akin to something he’d experience as a child first thing when he’d wake up after a daytime nap, the tint of disappointment about missing out on something important—together with the buzz over the upcoming night and all the mysterious darkness it augurs.

The opening chords of the song Kurt’s put up instantly catch Blaine’s ear as they blend into the perfect harmony with his visual perception at the moment; he steals a curious glance at the display of Kurt’s iPhone.

At the minimalistic, electronic motif, Kurt perceptibly relaxes into his seat, letting the back of his head hit the headrest. It doesn’t take long for the vocals to chime in, just as menacingly cold, weaving themselves into the simple, almost bare pattern of chords. It seems to Blaine that the only thing missing from the picture is the dusky smoke from the cigarettes.

_i’m over_  
_it_  
_all_  
_i got_  
_bored_  
_a long..._  
_long..._  
_time ago_

Kurt mouthes the lyrics with a cold, icy glaze in his eyes as he stares off into the distance—when the stirring tension in the hitherto slow, forcibly tamed melody _snaps_ into a sudden, fractured surge, sweeping over them in broad, repeated tides, making the blood rush and the heart race—yet when Blaine looks to his left, Kurt just sits there, just as still, just as impassive, quietly murmuring the words that the lead vocalist strains his throat over. This is enthralling to watch.

Kurt reaches out to open the built-in ashtray next to the gear shift, then fishes out his lighter from the pocket of his denim jacket before holding it out to Blaine. Blaine stares at it in stunned silence. Feeling Blaine hesitate, Kurt nods encouragingly.

Having no clue as to what gave him out, he wraps his fingers around Kurt’s lighter, accepting it, as his other hand fishes out his opened pack of cigarettes. Kurt pulls the windows up for those few moments as Blaine lights one up.

When he takes his first drag, he lets his head touch the headrest in Kurt’s fashion, a goofy smile tugging at his lips. He takes notice of the detour Kurt’s taken to get to his and Finn’s place when he could’ve driven straight through the town, the traffic isn’t bad according to Kurt’s GPS navigator above the AC control panel.

He barely makes his second drag when Kurt’s gentle fingers wrap around the cigarette next to Blaine’s lips. Blaine watches Kurt take it away from him and wrap his own mouth around it, keeping his eyes on the road as he makes a deep drag of his own.

Kurt lets the puff of smoke out as he starts to bob his head to the rhythm, reaching out to turn the volume up higher.

Bubbling over with an inexplicable feeling, Blaine snorts once, then twice, and before he knows it he’s shaking with loud laughter that he can barely hear over the blasting music as he leans back into his seat. Kurt sees it with the corner of his eye and can’t help his own silly smile that he tries to hide behind the cigarette before he finds Blaine’s mouth with it and forces it in between Blaine’s lips in an attempt to ward off his contagious beam.

Still laughing, Blaine takes the cigarette, makes a hungry drag, and lets out a shuddering breath, turning to watch the landscapes outside his window shift and merge.

_and you_  
_kept_  
_twisting_  
_(my words)_  
_and you_  
_kept_  
_twisting_  
_(orders)_

_“Of events that, occurred! I heard, I’m hard to love!”_ Kurt outright screams into the thunderous burst of the song from the car speakers.

Blaine turns to gaze at him with the same look on his face as that day in front of the coffee shop and can’t help it.

*

Together they slam their respective doors shut. Kurt circles the front of the car, throwing the keys up into the air for Blaine to catch them.

“So, since when are you a smoker?” Blaine asks Kurt with a smile as they head for the front door. The suburban street is quiet as it bathes in the latest sunbeams, the kind of tranquility that’s a stark contrast against the ear-splitting experience Kurt and Blaine had inside the car all but a few seconds ago.

“The better question is, since when I am not,” Kurt counterpoints, letting out a blissful sigh. “Me smoking became the last straw for the majority of my friends,” he tells Blaine as offhandedly as if they are talking about the weather, glancing back at him as they approach the stoop.

“What kind of friends were those,” Blaine mumbles unsurely, eyeing Kurt’s back in front of him.

Kurt shrugs, makes a blithe sigh, and turns to face Blaine as he leans on the door handle with his hand.

“Mercedes, Tina, Artie,” Kurt starts naming the characters in question, eyes looking up at the sky. Blaine can’t help but smile at Kurt giving a literal answer to his rhetorical question. “Pretty much the whole Glee Club,” he sums it up, satisfied, leveling his gaze back at Blaine. “Except for Rachel. And Finn,” he adds with a nod, pushing the door open. “Finn’s a sweetheart.”

Blaine chuckles, watching his feet.

“When we graduated I figured I might as well keep the desperate measures to their desperate times. Let what happened in Lima stay in Lima,” Kurt says dryly, casually, as they walk deeper into the house.

Blaine lets himself eye Kurt discreetly; this is the first time he referenced those ‘dark times’ left in Lima.

“And what about you, sweetie?” Kurt takes on that flirty tone as he circles the corner leading into the living room, glancing back at Blaine over his shoulder, fingers tracing the wall.

Blaine returns the gaze and a disarming smile. Then shrugs, “Got tight with money, I guess.”

Walking with his back to Blaine, Kurt breaks into a toothy smile, hanging his head.

“How did you know I relapsed?” Blaine asks him when they reach the garage door. “Do I— _smell?_ ” he wrinkles his nose, smiling.

Kurt laughs a warm, angelic laugh, turning to face Blaine as he lazily presses his back into the closed door.

 _“Blaine,”_ he says in that _voice_ of his, tilting his head. “You smell _fantastic,_ ” he breathes out, throwing his head back—all but _moaning_ the last word. Blaine feels his body tremble with unrelenting sparks; he’s almost sure his vision goes black for a few seconds even though the hallway is poorly lit as it is.

“But you might want to work on your disguise,” Kurt advises him before he pushes off the door and fixes the tip of Blaine’s pack peeking out of his sweatshirt pocket.

*

They giggle when they stumble into the garage as the rest of the band performs the setups and the tuneups, a pleasant murmur of their voices filling the room as they chat.

Finn is the first one to notice them, quitting his play and grabbing his ride cymbal to stifle the din.

“Hello gang,” Kurt purrs as he falls straight into Jesse’s arms. Jesse smiles at him, cupping his elbows, though he doesn’t miss the whiff. “Look who I brought you. Now, what would you be doing without my seduction skills?” Kurt teases as Blaine high-fives Finn; Finn beams up at him, getting up to pat Blaine on his back over the drum set.

“Thanks, Kurt, but Blaine,” Jesse addresses Blaine as his hands wind their natural way around Kurt’s waist. “Have you been smoking?” he asks hesitantly with a grimace. He knew Blaine only smoked when something was troubling him.

Blaine doesn’t respond quite right away, scratching his nose with the back of his hand, eyeing Kurt with a secret smile. Kurt blindly feels around Jesse’s pockets to fish out a huge green apple he asked for, then bites into it, challenging Blaine with an imperturbable gaze, wiggling his delicate eyebrows at him.

Blaine chortles into his fist before taking his hand away from his face.

“Yeah. But don’t worry though, it was a happy cigarette,” Blaine promises Jesse as he wraps the strap of his guitar—all set up and ready thanks to Jesse—around his back.

His response seems to shatter Kurt’s self-contained facade as a mad smile escapes Kurt’s better judgment; he has to close his eyes for a second to will it away as he bites his lips into submission and takes his face back under control.

“Amen,” Blaine hears Santana’s mellow timbre behind him as she tunes up her bass. 

Jesse smiles—and then seems to remember something, “Oh, guys. I’ve been offered a gig at this place next Friday, it’s like a rock club, their whole theme is cover bands.”

“And I presume by ‘I’ he means ‘we’?” Santana muses out loud dryly.

“Yes, Santana. By ‘me’ I mean ‘all of us’,” Jesse clarifies just for her.

Finn shrugs, looking between Santana and Blaine, “I think I’m down with that; you?”

“A gay club?” Kurt cranes his neck to bat his eyelashes up at Jesse.

Jesse smiles at him and murmurs _uh-uh;_ Kurt lets out a disappointed sigh. If there was any doubt in Finn’s mind as to whether Kurt’d smoked with Blaine, it’s all vanished by now.

Besides, as if Kurt would just sit idly by as Blaine smoked next to him.

“So then you’re not going?” Jesse asks Kurt, talking to the back of his head.

Kurt shrugs his shoulders coyly, his eyes finding Blaine.

“What do you think Blaine, should I go?” he asks blatantly, right from the circle of Jesse’s arms. And yet it seems that _everyone_ in this room—with the exception of Finn—couldn’t care less, even _Blaine_ himself—just giggles like an idiot before making a show of composing himself and responding with a solemn _‘absolutely’._

Finn’s gaze races between the two; he’s somewhat concerned by this point. Are they _trying_ to give themselves away?

As discreetly as he can manage, Finn glances over his shoulder were Santana is leaning on the wall, meaning to check on the savviest person in the room, yet before he casually averts his gaze back—he stares. She’s texting someone with the _gentlest_ smile on her face the world has seen perhaps _anybody_ put on, let alone Santana.

“Then going I am,” Kurt throws his head back to rest on Jesse’s shoulder before biting into his apple again. Jesse beams.

Finn clears his throat, suggesting they start practicing. Much to his relief, it doesn’t take everyone long to fall back into their routine as they find their respective places and start improvising, then sharing their thoughts and original pieces.

Finn honestly didn’t expect everything to spiral out of control that fast as soon as the two were brought up to speed with their feelings.


	3. Blaine’s not gonna teach him how to dance with Kurt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ([music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfCJHSOib1deVvEwnw-cNcayc_owc4Zy))

And Finn wasn’t even there to for the _worst,_ a couple of days later at the gay club.

In Blaine’s defense, what happened that night would never have happened if Jesse hadn’t felt compelled to back out of his and Kurt’s plans earlier that day. The idea of paying a visit to a gay club had been floating in their minds ever since that Friday session—after Kurt’s kindly query as to whether the club they were supposed to have a gig at next week happened to be a _gay_ club.

Blaine tried not to follow the intricacies of Kurt’s and Jesse’s relationship _too_ closely, but there was one thing he couldn’t escape noticing. For people who took quite a pleasure in flirting left and right and teasing each other—as a couple, they seldom went out to public places and mostly kept to their established group of friends. In fact, Blaine was somewhat surprised they hadn’t become regulars at _some_ gay bar by this point (seeing that both used to frequent those places quite a lot before they became exclusive.)

Perhaps found what they were looking for, a voice in Blaine’s head suggests.

 _Regardless_ of that, an old friend of Jesse’s from Akron reached out to him that day on a short notice, explaining how he was stopping by in Columbus and how he was only going to stay for the night.

As helpless against Kurt’s charm as was Blaine, Jesse couldn’t quite ditch his boyfriend all the way, of course, so he promised to stay with Kurt for at least a couple of hours there before he ran off to meet his buddy.

“Wanna go with us?”

The gulp of tea Blaine took threatens to escape through his nose as he starts to cough, staring up at Jesse, incredulous.

“Sorry?”

“To the gay club,” Jesse says with a shrug, doing the buckle on his watch. “Dance with us, chill out. Boost your ego a bit when you become the aim of every gay soul in sight. And _then,_ I’ll go get Simon and you’ll drop Kurt off at his,” Jesse adds with a sly smile, revealing the self-serving motives underlying his proposal.

Blaine chuckles. “Yeah, alright. You want me to be Kurt’s designated driver? Could’ve just asked, I’d do it.”

Jesse frowns.

“Well, you maybe you would. _I_ wouldn’t,” he admits frankly, alluding to his selfish side. “Not if I wasn’t invited to the fun part.”

Blaine gulps down the few remaining sips of his tea as he climbs off the island stool, then goes to leave his cup in the sink.

“But for Kurt, I would, of course,” Jesse amends. “Kurt is”—he points a finger at Blaine—“the only exception.”

Blaine chuckles. How many times has he caught himself thinking Jesse and Cooper would get along just about perfectly?

“Yeah. But not today though?” Blaine teases Jesse's inconsistencies and the fact that he’s literally asking Blaine to handle what he assures him he would, for Kurt, _‘of course’_.

“Careful,” Jesse says as he levels Blaine with a sarcastic glare. Blaine grins. “So what, you’re with us or not?” he asks Blaine then, nodding at him.

See no reason why not, Blaine thought then—and half an hour later found himself sitting behind the wheel, Kurt and Jesse in his backseat giving him the directions to the place they had in mind.

Sparks of adrenaline were racing down Blaine’s thighs as his stomach churned anxiously.

*

If Blaine had to put his first impression of a gay bar into words, he would probably characterize the place as a perfectly regular bar with the exception of the public, which was all Kurts and Jesses, everywhere.

Yep, that summed it up nicely, he thought, sitting at the bar, sipping at his alcohol-free drink as he was familiarizing himself with the surroundings. He couldn’t quite settle on the way to conduct himself as to attract as little attention as possible; he didn’t want to dance and have somebody try to crowd him from behind, yet he didn’t want to sit at the bar all night, afraid someone would get the wrong idea and decide he’s in need of company.

He was sober is all; even sober he knew it was him and not the place, but alas, sober he had agreed to stay all night, for it was the very purpose of him being there in the first place.

Few times Blaine went upstairs to get some air and was close to lighting up a cigarette, but stifled the urge each time. He was curious to test his limits when under stress and see how far he could make it without resorting to those ‘dark measures’ as Kurt had so aptly put it a couple of days ago. His last cigarette with Kurt in the car was so far from being dark that, if Blaine was to ever have his truly last one, he would really prefer it to stay that way.

One time Jesse dragged Blaine to the dance floor while Kurt kept Blaine’s seat warm, sipping at his first drink that night. Kurt watched the two fool around and, for some mysterious reason, the sight of them together filled him with a weird sense of mirth.

By the time Jesse had to leave, Blaine had lost the count of cocktails Kurt had refilled and himself had turned down an impressive handful of guys with an apologetic, “No, um...I’m not on your team.”

He never liked saying no, but saying those words in particular made it even more cringy for him—as if he was knowingly deceiving those poor dudes, and by the time Jesse had to leave, Blaine, quite honestly, wouldn’t have minded leaving himself.

“Keep an eye on my boy, will ya?” Jesse asks him jokingly, pressing their foreheads together, patting Blaine on the back of his neck. Blaine nods and wishes him luck as Jesse pilfers a piece of lemon from the brim of Blaine’s glass.

Ten minutes in and someone else is by Blaine’s side.

Blaine remembers him to this day because it was the first guy in this club—the first guy in Blaine’s life—that was a shameless flirt towards him but whom Blaine felt no actual desire to turn down. Not at first.

Looking back at it, Blaine sees now that Sebastian and Kurt did actually have something in common. Maybe it was the hair, the posture, or the breath of confidence they had to the way they spoke and flirted and teased. There was no one like Kurt for Blaine; even _then,_ on some subconscious level, Blaine knew that if it were Kurt in Sebastian’s place, Blaine wouldn’t have thought twice about it. He wouldn’t turn him down then, later, or ever.

Still, it was something new. This felt like a darker version of Kurt somehow, a colder one, more ruthless, less inviting. Yet he was as calm as a rock taking one breaking wave after another and made it seem like making others blush came as easy to him as breathing. Blaine couldn’t explain back then why he kept leading the guy on, why he wouldn’t just get away or go sit somewhere else.

It flattered him. The attention this guy was pouring his way _flattered_ Blaine for the first time on Blaine’s conscious memory, and they’ve kept at this game of cat and mouse for a good half an hour.

“So tell me, Blaine,” Sebastian drawls in his vibrant, unctuous voice, leaning on the bar top with his elbow. “Who’s got the pleasure of leaving with you tonight?”

Blaine’s mentioned being the designated driver when Sebastian attempted to buy him a drink—a real drink.

“No, it’s not like that, um—I’m just dropping him off,” Blaine says into his glass, smiling.

“His loss.”

Blaine’s smile grows wider right before he takes a sip.

“You know, when you’re done tucking your friend to sleep, you can always come back,” Sebastian tells him with meaningfully. “Trust me, no one here has better stamina than me when it comes to hearing the last call,” Sebastian says, tilting his head as he watches Blaine.

“Hm, so you come here a lot?” Blaine asks conversationally, licking his lips that taste like his drink.

Sebastian stares at him, then says, “They have a drink named after me, you do the math. What I’m curious about is, how come I’ve never seen _you_ around?”

Blaine takes notice of the bit-by-bit way Sebastian loses hold of his detached, cocky facade; his gaze grows darker as his attention slowly slips under thrall to every little word Blaine says, every gesture he makes.

“’tis my first time,” Blaine explains nonchalantly.

This earns him a cynical scoff. “Oh please. Where were you going all this time? Rubbing bellies with dad bods at Scandals?” Sebastian asks, and by the way his lips curve in disdain Blaine construes that Scandals must be some godforsaken place on the list of top local gay bars.

Blaine smiles; he finds pleasure in weaving his responses to Sebastian’s questions in such a way as to baffle _him._

“No, I mean, my first time,” Blaine clarifies, glancing at Sebastian before taking another sip. “At a gay club.”

The way all traces of emotion flee Sebastian’s face at that moment—is precious. In the blink of an eye, his gaze darkens all the way; he looks away, flexes his jaw, then takes a couple of heavy sips of his own drink. And when he turns back to Blaine, he actually straddles the stool, this time granting Blaine his undivided attention. “Come again?” Sebastian asks, watching him closely.

Blaine raises an innocent eyebrow, feigning obliviousness as to what could’ve caused such a reaction.

Sebastian’s chest puffs up as he sucks in a deep breath. He glances away once more, gives the back of his neck a scratch, clears his throat, and then—as if having mustered up all the stamina in the world—he turns his intense gaze back to Blaine. “You’ve ever been with a man?” comes his straightforward inquiry.

“No,” Blaine responds, looking Sebastian straight in the eye.

_What on earth do you think you’re doing?_

Sebastian strains his jaw, holds the eye contact.

_dead and gone_  
_not too long_  
_i’ll be right behind you_  
_if i keep this up_  


Blaine chuckles secretly at Sebastian’s face and turns to face the bar before hiding his smile in his cocktail. He feels Sebastian’s eyes bore into him and finds himself not minding it at all.

The club gets filled with a curious rhythm that stands out among other tunes that have been played so far. Blaine turns in his seat, deciding he might as well keep his promise to Jesse (as well as slake his own tingle of curiosity) and check up on Kurt.

And right there, in the middle of the dance floor that has been half-emptied, Kurt is dancing with somebody else.

Somebody else is murmuring something into Kurt’s ear as Kurt, with his eyes peacefully closed, presses his back against the guy’s chest. Seeing them sway to the languid rhythm, the guy’s dark muscular biceps against Kurt’s pale skin, Blaine feels his heartbeat pick up a sick pace.

As Blaine turns his body to fully face the dance floor, Sebastian takes it as Blaine indulging him.

“So where were you all this time, huh Blaine?”

Blaine watches the way the stranger’s hand squeezes Kurt’s hip, pressing their pelvises together, his white teeth biting at Kurt’s earlobe.

“Watching Twilight with your girlfriend as you braided each other’s hair?”

Blaine sees the guy’s other hand crawl into the tightness of Kurt’s front pocket in his close-fitting jeans, sees the way his teeth graze the line of Kurt’s jaw, sees the way Kurt—in some kind of daze—responds to his touch, edging his lips closer to the stranger’s seeking mouth. Sees the way Kurt arches his neck, his delicate fingers clawing into the guy’s brawny biceps.

“Picking up chicks with your rockstar charms during the day as you beat off to that Axl Rose poster on your wall every night?”

Blaine slams his glass down with a menacing _thud_ , nearly splashing half of its contents in the process, when the guy’s lips ghost over Kurt’s inviting ones.

Sebastian jerks, glancing at his jeans and then up at Blaine, his face twisted in a _‘wtf?’_ expression.

But Blaine doesn’t see it, Blaine sees red. He only has his eyes for the madness that’s happening on the dance floor. Having lost the last bit of his self-restraint— _the last bit of himself_ —he starts to storm towards the pair. He’s never felt the anger so powerful, overwhelming him so thoroughly as it took over his whole mind, body, and soul.

Eyes closed, Kurt smiles groggily into the stranger’s mouth _seconds_ before their lips brush—right when Blaine intervenes as he shoves the guy off of Kurt, grabbing Kurt by the waist instinctively.

“He’s got a boyfriend, okay?” Blaine strains his throat, shouting at the stranger over the heavy pulse of the music.

He tries to keep his rage at bay—the guy didn’t know, it wasn’t his fault—as Blaine’s arm winds itself unconsciously around Kurt’s waist, holding him close.

The guy arches an enraged eyebrow, throwing his hands up in a _wtf_ fashion as he regards Kurt’s back with a cold, cheated gaze—and then waves them off altogether, muttering something along the same _fuck_ lines as he walks away.

Blaine watches him go, cupping Kurt’s elbow with the hand that used to rest on Kurt’s waist.

“What are you _doing_ , Kurt?” Blaine growls into Kurt’s ear, feeling his chest rumble with his voice before he even hears it. To Kurt just now, he must’ve sounded like an _animal._

Meanwhile, Kurt’s hand catches Blaine’s other one, the one that he pushed the stranger off with. Kurt laces their fingers together as his left arm escapes Blaine’s grip in order to slide up Blaine’s shoulder and dip under Blaine’s T-shirt at the back of his neck.

Blaine freezes dead in his tracks as the coolness of Kurt’s fingers against his bare skin sends a rush of goosebumps down his back. Kurt nuzzles Blaine’s temple, breathing in the smell of his hair.

“Dance with me,” Kurt says in a low voice, setting Blaine’s ear on fire as Blaine squeezes their clasped fingers without even being aware of it.

And before Blaine has the time to quit gawking like a helpless fish cast on the shore and actually _respond_ —Kurt steps onto him in a wide, confident stride as he starts to lead them in a teasing, drawn-out dance. Blaine stumbles back, clutching at Kurt’s waist.

The song reduces to the three recurrent chords that go on in circles again and again and again, blending together with the monotonous voice lulling over the music. The vocals are soft and pliable as they drift back and forth over the sound of winds and keyboards and the soft rhythm that resembles somebody’s heartbeat rather than regular drums.

Kurt presses their heads together, nuzzling Blaine’s hair, his ear, the line of his jaw as they keep moving to the smooth beat, their hips brushing with every little movement they make. And Blaine—Blaine finds it hard to breathe in Kurt’s arms as he grabs a fistful of Kurt’s cotton T-shirt; he must be squeezing their laced fingers so hard it hurts for Kurt, but Kurt—shows no sign of it, just keeps nudging their faces together. Blaine’s heart races; he makes a shuddering gulp of air, tries to force his chest to stop heaving so wildly because Kurt can _feel_ it—Kurt can feel all of it.

_lay your hands down_  
_and rest your tired eyes_  
_call upon your final fate but—_  
_but don’t apologize_

Kurt tilts his head back a little, pressing their cheeks together—Blaine presses back, eyes fluttering shut. Almost unconscious, he guides their clasped hands closer, tucking them in between their bodies, cradling Kurt’s fingers against his chest. Kurt keeps inching his head further back until his cheek slips from where it was pressed to the side Blaine’s face—he throws his head back, baring his throat to Blaine as he moves to change sides. Blaine’s nose brushes against Kurt’s neck, and he shudders, his whole body trembling with a sudden surge of butterflies unleashed from his heart down to all of his limbs never mind the stomach.

When Kurt’s other cheek finds the other side of Blaine’s face, Blaine pushes back eagerly; Kurt’s fingers untangle themselves from Blaine’s grip to make their teasing way up his chest, curl around Blaine’s neck, and tug at his small curls there at the back.

If it wasn’t for the music, both of them would’ve heard the deep, vibrant moan escaping Blaine’s throat as his freed hand winds its way around Kurt’s lower back, urging him even closer.

One hand in Blaine’s hair, the other one shoved under the hem of Blaine’s T-shirt, Kurt moves his head up and down, incessant, scratching their stubbles together. Blaine _mewls_ quietly, swept up in a whirlwind of crushing pleasure—hot sparks assailing him on all sides, sending impulses to his crotch as he clutches on to Kurt for his life. Kurt’s hand slides further upward, tangling itself in Blaine’s mess of curls in order to control the movement of Blaine’s head against Kurt’s own.

Blaine can feel himself go weak at his knees as his legs forget how to dance; eyes shut and lips parted slightly, his whole body throbs as his heartbeat gallops and his skin shivers with cold sweat against Kurt’s heated, painfully, _shatteringly_ perfect body in his arms.

Kurt arches his neck again, changing sides again, and after he does so, Blaine inches closer to him, nuzzling behind his ear, squeezing Kurt tighter in the snug circle of his arms. Blaine’s hands roam over Kurt’s back, trying to cover as much of the expanse as physically possible, from his lower back up to his shoulder blades as Blaine feels Kurt’s fingers stroke the knobs on his spine.

Kurt’s hand keeps tightening then relaxing its grip on Blaine’s hair, tugging at its roots, teasing at his skin. His other hand slips from under his T-shirt to cup the side of Blaine’s jaw instead.

The song reaches its climax, the tune grows ever richer with the background noises and screams and roars and other tracks that Blaine’s not in the state of mind to put a name to. This time Kurt switches the sides of their faces without bothering to throw his head back. This time their noses get smashed together, lips ghost against each other as they breathe each other’s hot breaths those spare moments they get to.

Their dance simmers down to absent stamping and treading in place as Kurt squeezes Blaine’s jaw in between his cheek and his forceful hand, breathing into Blaine’s ear. Blaine’s nails bite into the soft fabric on Kurt’s back as he swallows down hard, his eyes roll in his head—dear god, he’s never felt _anything_ like this before. He’s never felt _anything period,_ it sure as hell now seems.

The song is on its last gasp, Blaine knows it but he doesn’t trust himself to let Kurt go when Kurt feels like going.

_but i still got a lot to say_

The music slips through their fingers as it merges into something else completely, the rhythm all wrong and too-fast, leaving Kurt and Blaine clutching at each other, panting; their dance long-forgotten and given up. Kurt’s hand lets go of Blaine’s disheveled hair as it joins his other one in cupping Blaine’s jaw. In the dark, Kurt searches out Blaine’s forehead with his own as Blaine keeps squeezing Kurt’s heated, strong, _ohmygodsoperfect_ body in his hands. They brush their noses together, both trying to calm their breathing down.

Regardless of what Kurt says any moment from now, Blaine cannot imagine himself mustering the strength to let him go, to loosen the circle of his arms where he holds him close and _there_ and with him.

Holding his breath, Blaine hears and _feels_ Kurt’s tinkling, breathy laugh—the one from behind the door that night when he heard him and Jesse on the couch— _the same fucking one_ now on his lips, when Kurt traces the line of Blaine’s jaw with his thumb.

“Let’s get out of here, straightie,” Kurt sighs into Blaine’s mouth, nudging the tip of his nose. “I’ve had one too many”—and lets go of him, his hands losing contact with Blaine’s jaw, smooth and lingering, fingers skimming down Blaine’s chest; Blaine’s arms go slack out of pure _stupor_ when Kurt brushes past him as he heads for the bar to close his tab.

For a couple of moments onwards, Blaine stands frozen in the middle of the dance floor, facing the wall. The new, _irrelevant_ song barely registers in his mind as he stands and breathes and fails to wrap his mind around what has just happened.

When he shoves his hands into his back pockets, turning around, glassy-eyed, there’s Sebastian standing sentinel over him. The upper buttons on his shirt undone, gaze glazed with feral hunger, he looks as though he’s experienced first-hand _everything_ Blaine has just lived through with Kurt.

Being on the receiving end of that animalistic stare, Blaine feels his heart skip a frightened beat. As Sebastian inches closer, Blaine takes an instinctive, wary step back.

Only then does Blaine realize that Sebastian must be meaning to tell him something—which he can’t do over the stomping music. So he lets him step up closer.

Sebastian’s fingers ghost over the waistline of Blaine’s jeans, right over his hip when he growls into Blaine’s ear, low and dangerous, “If he doesn’t fuck you tonight, I will.”

Blaine jerks back, aghast and stunned into silence, his hands still inside his back pockets, his heartbeat racing madly. Sebastian’s eyes keep boring into his, dark, deadly, sure, sending chills down Blaine’s spine.

“You heard me,” he tells Blaine without breaking their eye contact.

Blaine stares at him, speechless, eyeing Kurt behind Sebastian’s shoulder where he stands at the bar with his back to them, chatting coyly with a bartender. When Blaine looks back at Sebastian, the look is almost befuddled, unsure.

_What the _fuck_ is going on?_

_And how the _fuck_ was he able to draw so much attention? His first time at a gay club, Jesus Christ._

Sebastian moves even closer as he steps back into Blaine’s personal space without giving him the reprieve from his intense gaze. Blaine tenses up, looking up at him before he feels Sebastian’s hand work its way into the front pocket of Blaine’s jeans. Blaine glances down, caught off guard—a second of hesitation ensues when he becomes aware of Sebastian’s fingers against his leg through the thin fabric of his pocket—before Blaine rushes to take a clear step back, warning Sebastian with an unequivocal hostility in his glare. Sebastian does nothing but flex his jaw—and Blaine leaves.

It’s only when he’s on his way to Kurt that the piece of paper in his pocket brushing against his leg registers with Blaine.

*

_a little good for you_  
_a little more evil for me_  
_come and see_  
_come and see_  
_come_

Blaine takes Kurt home. They’re quiet at first as Kurt lets his head fall back on the headrest and bob to the abstract rhythm the car pulses with. Shadows from street lamps brush over their faces; Blaine keeps his gaze on the road, distant and emptied, hands working the wheel on autopilot.

Eyelids dipped sweetly, Kurt turns to Blaine with a soft smile. “Off to yours?”

Blaine’s hold on the steering wheel tightens; slowly, he turns his head to look at Kurt. “Ours? I thought I was taking you home.”

At this, Kurt’s eyes flutter open to look at Blaine. Kurt looks at him as if all that’s happening right now is—alright. As if it’s perfectly normal, and maybe even good.

“I don’t wanna go home,” Kurt pouts coquettishly. Blaine turns back to the road. “Sam’s there.”

”Sorry?” Blaine asks, confused.

Kurt yawns.

“Sam Evans, the stripper.”

“Ah.” That guy. “He’s in town?” Blaine asks as he types his and Jesse’s coordinates into his Navigator.

“Uh-huh,” Kurt grumbles, hardly excited. “It’s like today is the national come-visit-Columbus day. Rachel might’ve been misinformed though, as she will only be coming by Saturday,” Kurt notes dryly.

“I thought they were gonna see each other on July 4th, in Lima.”

“Oh yeah,” Kurt says, snuggling in his seat as he turns to face Blaine. “They’re even gonna try to drag me along.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“I know,” Kurt says right away—as if he knew Blaine would say that. “But Carole.”

Blaine frowns; Carole is Kurt’s stepmother, Finn’s mom.

“What about her?” Blaine asks softly, glancing at Kurt.

“She misses me,” Kurt says in an even, calm voice, still watching Blaine.

“And...what about your dad?”

Kurt is quiet, yet he doesn’t take his eyes off Blaine—just tilts his head back a little, scratching his cheek against the leather of the headrest, his eyes a preoccupied, clouded shade of blue.

_what do I look like to you_  
_what do you want me to be_  
_uh oh_

Concerned by the silence, Blaine chances a glance at Kurt.

“Yeah, she misses him also.”

This time Blaine turns to look at Kurt for a dangerously unlimited amount of time because _this_ time is the first time he hears Kurt’s voice like _that._

 _This_ is everything. _This_ is all the glances, all the touches, the flirty smiles, and the dances combined. Because Blaine knows in his heart it’s been a long time since Kurt has last talked in that voice to _anyone_ ; perhaps not even to Finn—certainly not to Jesse.

Blaine knows that just here just now, he was lucky enough to get a glimpse of what it would've felt like to talk to Kurt from some faraway times—before his friends gave up on him, before he started smoking, before something dark and awful happened to him that not him nor Finn ever talk about now.

Blaine knows nothing about Kurt’s life that really matters, yet he savors those seconds as much as he knows Finn would have, had he been there in the car with them to witness it.

“You’ve reached your destination,” a pleasant voice announces on Blaine's Navigator. Blaine watches the boom barrier in front of them rise into the air.

*

“I want broccoli.”

Blaine changes T-shirts as Kurt sits on the couch, rocking with his legs pressed against his chest, facing away from Blaine.

”Come again?” Blaine asks, glancing over his shoulder as he washes the cup he left earlier.

“Are you done yet? Can I turn?” Kurt teases, throwing his head back to rest on the back of the couch, looking at Blaine upside down.

Blaine chuckles; it’s not like he told Kurt not to watch.

“I want broccoli,” Kurt repeats.

Blaine smiles. “So?”

“So I want it now and I want it stewed and I don’t want to cook,” Kurt says as he yawns, casual and relaxed. “By any chance, do you have some in your fridge? Or are you guys on a rigid pizza diet 24/7?”

Blaine glares at Kurt’s subtle gibe as he walks up to the fridge to check.

“Yes we _do,_ in fact,” he says in triumph when he spots a head of broccoli resting on the bottom shelf. Granted, buying this particular vegetable was Jesse’s initiative, but it’s not like Blaine’s eating habits are too terrible on their own.

“Wow. Now you got my attention,” Kurt says all joking aside as he gets up and walks up to Blaine in the kitchen. “The pot? The lid? The bowl?”

Blaine gets everything Kurt asks for and puts it out on the counter for him. Then, Kurt steps into his personal space and—pressed a soft, sweet kiss to Blaine’s cheek.

“Thanks,” he coos into Blaine’s ear, patting his shoulder. “Wake me when you’re done,” he says in a light voice when he leaves the kitchen. Blaine stands, and breathes, and can’t quite feel his cheek as watches Kurt go and slump onto the couch.

And then, Blaine does something ridiculous. He starts to cook broccoli for Kurt at one o’clock in the morning.

By almost two, the bell rings. Blaine washes the soap off the pot before he puts it out to dry. Wiping his hands with a towel, he chances a wary glance at the countertop. It’s empty, yet again, and his own experience suggests this shouldn’t be Jesse, even though five minutes ago Kurt told him that Jesse was on his way.

Regardless, Blaine never seems to learn as he, yet again, opens the door without checking the viewer.

It’s Santana. The first glimpse Blaine gets of her, an idle towel in his hand, is when she’s fixing a speck of mascara under her eye. As soon as the opened door registers with her, she takes her hand off her face, locks her dark, piercing eyes onto Blaine’s, and—without a second of hesitation—starts to stride toward him.

Blaine catches her elbows when she grabs his neck, pressing her sharp thumbnails into the line of his jaw, and— _kisses_ him. Claims his mouth with a crazed, desperate passion that throws Blaine out of his element as he drops the towel and just stands there numbly, too stunned to react as she presses herself into him.

“San—” he tries to say to have it die in the kiss because, as soon as he opens his mouth to speak, she quickly shoves her smooth, warm tongue inside, trying to coax Blaine into kissing her back. He squeezes her thin waist in a gentle attempt to push her away. Which fails; she drags him along with her by the force of her hands clutching his jaw as she keeps sucking on his lips fiercely.

He cups her wrists on his face, mumbling into her mouth, “No, San—”

She seems to finally get the message, her hold on him loosening, as she pulls back a bit, staring at his face—angrily, Blaine finds. _Venomously._

He takes her face in his hands, his fingers sliding under the thick heaviness of her black hair.

“No,” he says, soft but clear. “What happened?” he asks then, searching her eyes with genuine concern.

“You tell _me_ what happened, and since when do you ask stupid questions?” she asks bitingly before she blatantly disregards his objections, pouncing on him in another attempt to kiss, hands stroking his chest coaxingly.

Just a few feet away from them in the dim light, Kurt sits on the couch with elbows plopped on top of its back as he noshes on broccoli Blaine made for him.

A fork in his mouth, he very much enjoys what’s unreeling in front of him, eyes brushing down their figures as he nibbles on one of the fork’s tines.

 _“Santana,”_ Blaine calls her attention again, disentangling them _again,_ losing his patience as he holds her head. She fumes with annoyance, pursing her lips as she glares at Blaine with a voiceless _‘What now?’._

He pins her with a meaningful stare until finally, he averts a demonstrative glance to the left.

She turns her head under Blaine’s hands and—jerks, unprepared for another person in the room.

“Fucking _hell,_ Hummel.”

Kurt tries to swallow as fast as possible, batting his eyelashes at her. “Please guys, don’t mind me here. I’m all into watching,” he says with a wink at Blaine.

“Fuck,” Santana mumbles under her breath, taking a step away from Blaine. She presses one hand to her forehead and the other one to her side. “Does he live here or what?”

“No, Santana. _Jesse_ does,” Blaine says in Kurt’s defense, bordering aggressive.

Kurt watches the exchange with a bowl of broccoli as if it’s some kind of Broadway show and he’s sitting in the first row with a bowl of popcorn.

“Santana.” Blaine waits until she looks at him. “We can go to my room and talk there.”

He knows something has to have happened because standing in front of him right now—is the old Santana. And, against Blaine’s fresh memories of the new Santana, this rough version of her is a stark, frightening contrast.

Her eyes, ruthless and stone-cold, pierce into Blaine’s, threatening to burn him alive as she grits her teeth, furious. Blaine feels as if he offended her somehow, watching her seemingly at a loss for words to retaliate. Which has never happened before.

Her eyes shooting daggers at Blaine, she spits out in a harsh, rancorous voice, “Go fuck yourselves, both of you.” She glares at Kurt chewing on his vegetables untroubled. “We all know you two are fucking anyways,” she grits on her way out before she slams the door shut.

Her first comment is something Blaine’s grown quite used to over the course of their friendship and knows how to deal with by now.

The last one though, makes him go numb with shock and a little bit of dread and maybe a little bit of something else.

Unperturbed, Kurt keeps munching on his broccoli, gazing up Blaine carefully as Blaine stares at the closed door with a blank expression.

“Bitch?” Kurt suggests, watching Blaine with gullible eyes as he eats.

His light, gentle voice jerks Blaine out of his daze; he turns to look down at Kurt.

“No,” he says softly, then turns back to look at the door. “Something happened.”

“Broccoli?” Kurt offers to Blaine, casually holding his bowl out.

Before Blaine has time to respond, the front door is swung open.

“Will somebody tell me why our door isn’t locked and why Santana has nearly shoved me off the stairs just now?” Jesse asks as he turns the lock shut and kicks his shoes off. “And why is our kitchen towel serving as a rug?” he asks, picking up the discarded cloth.

Kurt perks up, puts the bowl down on the coffee table, then hurdles over the back of the couch, racing up to Jesse. Jesse beams at him before catching Kurt’s thighs when Kurt flings himself onto him.

“Santana wanted Blaine to fuck her but Blaine said no and chose to abide by your no-screwing policy, right Blaine?” Kurt chimes in playfully, wrapping his legs around Jesse’s frame.

Jesse smirks, impressed, hauling Kurt up a bit.

“Oh wow. And here I thought people never change.”

Blaine forces a sarcastic smile, taking Kurt’s and Jesse’s interaction as his cue to leave. Jesse mumbles something into Kurt’s mouth as he carries him to the couch where he plops himself down on it, Kurt in his lap. Blaine fidgets timidly, stupidly, trying to remember if he has everything on him before retreating to his room where he closes the door on them.

Still feeling the warmth of Kurt’s touch with his hands, with his cheek, with his _lips,_ Blaine can’t recall a time it’s been more of a pure, sheer torture to simply _watch_.

*

Later that week on Friday, when they’re supposed to be performing at that rock club, Blaine stops by a certain someone on his way there.

He strolls through the apartment complex, maneuvering his way through the labyrinth of hallways until he reaches the door. He rings the bell, watching the beige carpet under his feet he remembers so well.

The last time he's been here was probably half a year ago, back when he and Santana were still a thing. The thought of it feels so bizarre right now he almost wants to question the authenticity of his memories.

Santana opens the door, all dressed up and ready for tonight, wrapped up in a tight-fitting black leather jacket and equally tight black pants. Blaine smiles at her outfit. “You look awesome,” he tells her before chancing a glance up at her, sympathetic and genuine.

She makes an annoyed moue at that, tilting her head in an unimpressed manner, but can’t eventually help a smile breaking through. Blaine and his geniality.

“You’re here to give me a ride?” she asks offhandedly, jutting her chin at him.

Blaine swallows down, hides his palms suddenly cold with sweat in his pockets.

“I will. But I came to talk first.”

Santana’s face slips under an imperturbable mask of emotionlessness as she crosses her arms, leveling Blaine with a grouchy glare.

“About me,” Blaine adds, swallowing nervously. “I need to talk.”

This brings a frown to Santana’s face—and Blaine knows that’s the glint of worry he sees in her eyes.

She pushes the door open, inviting him in. Blaine rubs his palms together, his heart pumping blood at a wild rate.

Once inside her living room, he forces himself to sit down on the couch, slow and careful.

He loved Santana’s place probably more than their own, it had this distinct, stylish feel to it, making it far more inviting than his and Jesse’s sloppy abode. Perhaps that was precisely the reason she made it a rare occasion to let them in and preferred to hang out at theirs instead—in an attempt to uphold its neatness and cleanliness.

She sits down at the opposite end of the couch, crosses her legs elegantly, then turns her head to look at Blaine sidelong, watching him.

Blaine clears his throat before shifting too, turning his body to face her, his gaze glued to his hands.

“About what you said back then.”

Santana frowns; there are plenty of things she might’ve said that could’ve hit Blaine a little too close to home as to make him question himself.

“On your way out.”

Her eyebrows, delicate and cared for, even out as she aims a stunned expression at Blaine—as if holding her breath the same way Blaine is at what he’s actually about to say.

At what he’s actually about to confess.

Blaine clears his throat again, swallows hard, and inches toward the edge of the couch.

“Kurt and I—,” he starts. “We’re— We’re not— We’re _not,_ ” he says, eyes boring into the furniture in Santana’s apartment. “But.”

His hand scratches the back of his neck before it slides forward to cover his mouth, fingers pinching his upper lip. Santana watches him jerk his hand down and clasp his fingers together, elbows pressed into his knees.

“But sometimes I feel like,” Blaine says as he stares at his feet, his voice dying to a flat, hollow whisper. “Like I wish we were.”

Santana is silent for a couple of moments as she looks at his face, at his ear, at his frizzy head of curls, his eyes that are hard and unforgiving, boring into the floor.

“At the bar,” Blaine says after a few seconds of dead silence, his voice now a bit louder. “The gay bar. That night you stopped by, there was a guy. Hitting on me.” Blaine arches his neck, covering it with his hand again. “He left me his number.”

Santana changes her posture, spreading her knees further apart, imitating Blaine as she presses her elbows into her knees and steeples her hands, watching him.

“And I _kept_ it,” he blurts, almost hysterical. “He.” Blaine closes his eyes, and Santana is oblivious to the way her own face winces in heartfelt worry for her friend. Blaine tries to swallow around the lump in his throat before he speaks up again, his voice labored and lifeless. “He isn’t Kurt.” Eyes still shut, Blaine squeezes them tighter still. “But when he said those words. When he— _offered_ me, I—” his voice breaks quietly.

Blaine blinks his eyes open, his gaze settles on some faraway point on Santana’s wall. She watches his face with an intense concentration.

“I knew it then if it was Kurt...I wouldn’t even think _twice_ about it,” Blaine shrugs quietly, miserably, helpless in his confession.

Silence. Silence in which the words Blaine’s just said, the words Blaine _finally_ said, echo in his head back to right, right to left, left to front, _relentless,_ each time pushing him closer and closer to the brink of comprehension of just _how_ they sounded.

And how they sounded _exactly the way he felt inside,_ and has been for a very long time now.

His eyebrows furrow as his lips start to quiver; Blaine hides his face in his hands.

“Blaine,” Santana warns sternly, reaching out to wrap her fingers around his wrists.

She peels his hands off his face gently, then makes him look at her as she squeezes his fingers in her own tight. Blaine stares at her intense face and sucks in a shuddering breath through his nose.

 _“This is okay,”_ she says in a harsh, forceful tone that under different circumstances could’ve been considered rude yet which suddenly, _magically,_ unravels that lump of emotions swelling in Blaine’s throat and sends a giant wave of relief washing down Blaine’s whole body, letting him breathe. And dear God how good it feels to be able to _breathe_ for the first time in months—so good he almost _chokes_ on it, squeezing Santana’s hands back.

It’s something he desperately needed to hear.

But, as funny as that sounds, this wasn’t something he came here to _hear;_ this was something he came here to give _her,_ he just didn’t know how much he needed it himself.

“Um,” he collects himself, squeezing her hands one last time before he lets go to pinch the bridge of his nose instead. “How’s...um, how’s Brittany doing?” he asks as casually as he can manage, praying to God she won’t shut him off.

Yet Santana’s voice is sharp and _physically_ painful when she says the next words; suddenly, her hands clap on her thighs as she gets up from the couch.

“No idea. Let’s move, before we’re late. There, you can ask her yourself,” she tells him as she disappears in the hallway.

That simple. Blaine watches her leave, pulling his hands away from his face.

*

_she’s got_  
_pretty almond eyes_  
_i was_  
_taken by surprise_  
_she was_  
_standing at the shore_  
_why? i_  
_guess i’ll never know_

_“Should I stay or should I go?”_ Finn drawls out from behind the drums, singing as he winces in vocal effort, his legs jittering as one of his feet presses the pedal first time, second time, third time, his bass drum producing the opening beat for their closing song.

Blaine’s curls are a sweaty mess, the damp fabric of his dark-gray T-shirt clings to his body as his nimble fingers work the chords, hands squeezing his electric guitar to the point of his veins swelling menacingly.

The whole band agreed to let the last number be nailed by Finn as he relieved Jesse to go keep Kurt company on the dance floor. In reality though, performing this song had been a dream of Finn’s ever since Glee Club (where he never got to do it,) so he couldn’t _not_ take Kurt up on his ‘seductive skills’, as Kurt once aptly put it, to have Jesse inveigled into Kurt’s arms on the dance floor while Finn had the stage to finally make his dream come true.

Blaine jerks his head back, sending his head of curls bouncing back, away from his eyes; he feels the streak of sweat trickling its way down his temple, his jaw tight, as he watches Kurt dance with Jesse the same way Kurt was dancing with a stranger a few days ago.

_you_  
_can_  
_stay a little longer_

Blaine yanks at the strings, feeling his nostrils flare as his gaze threatens to bore a hole in the two. Mostly in Kurt.

_you_  
_can_  
_stay a little longer now_

Kurt laughs, throwing his hands up and back to wind them around Jesse’s neck as he looks up at the stage cluelessly before he stumbles across Blaine’s fierce gaze, dark and sudden and unforgiving.

_you_  
_can_  
_stay a little longer_

_“Stay a little longer as my heart grows fonder!”_ Finn lets it all out—right before he beats the heavy rhythm out of the drums, struggling his throat through the rich chorus that’s all splashing tension and screeching howls of Blaine’s guitar that are shadowed by the low rumble of the one Santana borrowed from Jesse—the perfect harmony of vehemence and despair.

_i ain’t gonna be your ohio man_  
_i ain’t gonna take you by the hand_

Kurt keeps on moving with Jesse behind his back as the latter mouths the lyrics into his ear hotly, but Kurt doesn’t quite break Blaine’s eye contact, looking up at him with crystal blue eyes—a tinge of something dark in them also—that reminds Blaine of the day they met, of how Jesse was kissing down Kurt's neck and how Kurt was challenging Blaine with a stare.

This time Blaine won’t back down to stare at his sneakers like the foolish _idiot_ that he was.

Almost as a challenge, he blindly finds all the right chords, his bare biceps working sharply each time he snaps the strings with his pick with no care for their intactness—eyes fixed on Kurt, ruthless, unabating, as Kurt rocks to the heavy beat with Jesse’s body crowding him from behind, Jesse’s hands on his belly, Jesse’s mouth in his hair.

Finn rasps his throat out on the next insurmountable, crazily intense verse—his face red, neck covered in bloated veins as his arms fling blindly for the mad rhythm he’s mastered by heart years ago.

_“I packed up my artifacts I’m leaving mid-December as I’m leaving all the things I know the one thing to remember is that the middle of nowhere is somewhere for someone else Ohio’s gonna get you or she’ll put you on her bottom shelf yeah baby!”_

Kurt’s eyes never leave Blaine—even when Blaine is the first one to break their heated eye contact as his riff comes up, compelling him to focus on his fingers as they run the notes _flawlessly;_ nobody could discern the chord patter if they tried. Kurt keeps looking at Blaine as his own body moves with the flow Jesse steers, and Blaine misses just _the way_ Kurt’s looking at him.

All at once—the song is slimmed down to the single, low sound of Santana’s play as Blaine’s chest heaves; he glances back up into the audience, at Kurt.

_she’ll break the poor boy down_

Clueless to the tension in the air, Jesse finds Kurt’s chin with gentle fingers, inching Kurt’s jaw to face him; Kurt holds onto Blaine’s eye contact for as long as the angle lets him—but when Jesse presses his lips to Kurt’s in a languid, heated, hungry kiss—Kurt—Blaine’s _never seen_ Kurt respond like that, of all the times he’s been watching the two like some kind of desperate, closeted pervert, _God,_ Kurt’s never gripped Jesse’s jaw with splayed, keen fingers, never mouthed back at him with such naked fervor, never once lost his facade of coy passiveness like that. And Blaine can _feel_ a sweet tremor rushing down his body, making him weak at his knees at the realization that this right there—this must be—this _has_ to be—Blaine could bet _his life_ that this is all _a show, for him._

This almost makes him stumble over the chords.

Almost. Blaine’s one of the best in this, and he knows it. The song is swept up in a new tide that comes crashing suddenly and violently, and Blaine gives it his everything, absolute and ultimate everything. He squeezes the flawless, sublime play out of his guitar, bending in half with the effort, everyone else on the stage sweating out the outro to the utmost perfection.

Blaine pours into the music everything he’s got, everything he’s been keeping inside for the last month and a half, every little funny feeling he tried to stamp into submission, tried to conceal and contain and never ever think about each time he saw Kurt and Jesse do what they are doing right now, right in front of him, right there _for_ him on display. Blaine plays until his hands are shaking and he can’t feel his fingers anymore—and even then he keeps playing, blind and mad, this piece a single most difficult, intense, _devastating_ one they've taken on so far.

Kissing Jesse at that moment, Kurt is deafened by the yowling screech of Blaine’s guitar that crawls its way into Kurt’s head, runs down his veins, and claws into Kurt’s heart, urging it to pick up a jealous pace. At that moment Kurt is absolutely _high_ on Blaine’s emotions, feeling as if he is the direct author of this music, the driving force behind it, and the harder he’ll kiss Jesse’s hot, silky mouth—the harder the music will come to sweep him—and everyone in here—up, vitalizing the whole club to the verge of the guitar strings snapping, Finn’s voice breaking, and the drums shattering to pieces under the force of Finn’s strikes.

*

“Wow, um. Not really sure how one’s supposed to trump that,” the next band’s lead singer admits with a diffident smile, tuning up his guitar before they start their performance—scheduled as the closing one that night.

His compliment to the pack of Finn, Blaine, and Santana generates a rumble of an awkward laughter across the crowd.

“But we thought we could keep it light for you by the end, so for those of you out there who are not into hard rock, per se, and are more like, indie-light type, you might be happy,” he promises in an even, gentle voice that’s illustrative of his naturally coy demeanor.

The band stays true to their promise as they perform a series of generally mild, indie-rock hits that Blaine wouldn’t usually consider his first choice. More like Jesse’s.

Blaine readjusts his shirt that’s clinging to his damp skin when he finds a secluded place at the bar—public seems to harbor a universal appreciation for the indie-light type of music, seeing as they hurry out to the heart of the dance floor. Blaine watches Kurt facepalm at Jesse’s moves when the latter starts dancing to his jam like a madman.

Looking at Kurt’s face, slightly sweated and flushed and scintillating with laughter, Blaine feels his heart pump out a surge of heat that spreads down his veins before converging into a tingling sensation at the tip of his fingertips. Blaine feels his heart rate speed up as his hands curl into fists until his knuckles are white.

Having brought it out into the open, Blaine thought it would get easier. He didn’t dare to hope this feeling would vanish, but at least he hoped he’d get rid of the insufferable bout of despair that seized his chest each time he would so much as look at Kurt.

He thought that having admitted to it, he’d have all the bravery in the world. That having said that out loud, he’d be able to say anything, _do_ anything, and never, ever be afraid of being a coward or feeling week again.

But sitting right now, all sweaty and worked up and still out of breath, watching two _boyfriends_ dance to the lively tune, Blaine suddenly feels more scared than ever. Scared this feeling will never truly let go of him.

Sitting there, panting, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows around the coarse dryness of his throat, Blaine is for the first time actually terrified of what is happening to him.

“Two shots of Vodka for us, pretty face,” Santana says to the bartender as she takes a seat next to Blaine. Blaine levels her with a warning gaze: everybody knew better than to let him get his hands on Vodka, yet all he gets from her is a sharp raise of her eyebrow.

Everybody knew better than to argue with Santana.

He looks away defeatedly; his glance falls on Brittany dancing with Sam, both of them confident and rhythmic in their motions. Over the course of their band’s performance, she’s mostly kept to the bar, sipping her drinks, occasionally swaying her arms to the beat. Blaine didn’t have the chance to talk to Sam yet; the only two times they’ve exchanged any words at all were when they were introduced and later upon the wrap of their last song when Sam complimented their play.

Blaine knew about him and Brittany from what Finn had told him about Lima, yet Blaine never would’ve thought that they were still dating, and he’s somewhat confused it came as an equal surprise to Santana—at least from what he could glean, from what she would let him.

Because she doesn’t let the tiniest shred of emotion show when she opens her tab, informing the bartender to put all of their subsequent rounds on her. And so they drink.

*

Blaine goes rogue.

Finn sees it before it happens; somewhere halfway through the second piece performed by the last band, Finn stops by the bar when the drink in his hand is about to run out. That’s when he first gets the glimpse of Blaine and Santana drinking. In an attempt to stay inconspicuous, he turns his back to them slowly as his drink gets refilled, and when it’s done, he retreats to his dark corner, deciding to stay in a role of an observer for now.

By the third song, Blaine forfeits his attempts at sneaking unobtrusive glances at Kurt dancing with Jesse and goes for staring at the pair openly, eyes dark and jaws tight. Finn shifts his balance on his feet, glancing between Blaine and the pair, somewhat concerned.

_dance around like skeletons_  
_cause we forgot what we wanted_

By the fourth piece Blaine’s eyes, naturally dark, are pitch-black to the point of seeming aggressive, _lethal_ as he watches Kurt move obliviously, smoothly to the dark, uptempo beat.

_cause i never learned to tell you no_

Santana has to smack Blaine’s shoulder a few times in an attempt to draw his attention back to what she’s telling him animatedly, her gestures broad and her voice sharp.

_oh_  
_no i never learned_

Blaine doesn’t budge, doesn’t even seem to _feel_ her punches; menacingly quiet, he tosses off a yet another shot, then sucks his cheeks in at the bitter taste, eyes never leaving Kurt’s figure in the dark.

_oh i never learned to tell you no_

Yet much to Finn’s relief, the more Blaine seems to drink, the more this tightness seems to leave his body; and before that song is even over—the last vestige of tension fled Blaine’s posture as he sits relaxed and laid-back against the bar top. His eyes are glazed with a pleasant buzz, still dark but now harmless as they roam up and down Kurt’s figure moving with Jesse in the crowd against the flashing lights.

_and we almost go insane_  
_trying to chase_  
_some pleasure brand_  
_new_

Occasionally, he nods his acknowledgment of Santana’s animated chatter in his ear. At some point, she flips her thick hair back and actually laughs—in a way that Finn hasn’t seen her laugh for a week now, in a way Blaine told him she never used to laugh up until recently.

Finn has his own share of suspicions as to how her sudden lack of spirit had something to do with Sam’s unexpected arrival that night and with how Brittany introduced them as a boyfriend and a best friend. It _could_ be that Santana wasn’t head over heels happy with the fact that she and Britt weren’t going to be spending as much time together, now that Sam is in town—yet it’s hard for Finn to imagine Santana falling for something as petty and childish. After all, Sam wasn’t about to stay for longer than a week and she knew it. Which was why Finn was led to believe that the true reason behind her surliness wasn’t lying on the surface.

“Hey Finn, have you seen Santana?” Brittany screams over the loud music—what has been prior announced as the last song for today—jerking Finn out of his thoughts, when she and Sam stumble over to him, tipsy and laughing, clinging to each other.

Finn doesn’t see the way Blaine runs his tongue over the front of his gums, savoring the alcohol burn in his mouth before he turns back to the bar top where he puts his glass down with a loud, dangerous _thump._

Finn’s gaze brushes down Britt and Sam solemnly, distantly, before he strains his throat to shout back, “At the bar with Blaine.”

Finn doesn’t see the way Blaine slides off his stool carefully, patting Santana on her arm when he hums into her ear that he’ll be in the bathroom.

“Why are you here all alone?” Britt chuckles, poking Finn playfully with one hand, clutching to Sam’s arm with the other.

Finn musters a lopsided smile. “Honestly?” he asks, gesturing with his glass. “I’m still a little afraid of Santana,” he jokes over the loud music, shrugging.

Sam snorts out a sudden laugh which he stifles when Brittany turns to look at him.

Finn doesn’t see the way Blaine shoves his way through the crowd in a semblance of cool-headedness and composure, headed straight for the bar’s administrator.

“No like, honestly?” Sam asks Finn, making a flipping motion with his hand. “I’m totally with you on that, dude. This is like Sue meets Megan Fox, and it is _so, confusing,”_ Sam says with an amusingly stoned look on his face.

No one sees Blaine speak to the person in charge of the this night’s program. No one knows what Blaine says to them—one side of their head is shaved, baring a minimalistic picture of a small sheep tattooed on their skin, the other side hidden by the short, wavy strands of their dark-blue hair—yet they just shrug, nodding somewhat favorably, gesturing to the band on stage wrapping up their last song.

When the three of them, Finn, Britt, and Sam find Santana at the bar, Blaine isn’t there, much to Finn’s dismay.

Santana glares at Britt and Sam with an arrogant arch of her eyebrow, flipping her hair to the side as she pointedly straightens up her gorgeous, lean back, showing it off to the pair when they take their seats to the right of her. Finn lingers on his feet nearby as Britt flicks the tip of Sam’s nose before they giggle at some inside joke and order drinks.

“Where’s Blaine?” Finn asks Santana, relieved he doesn’t have to shout as the music seems to die down.

No one notices Blaine jumping up on stage as soon as the band squeezes the final chords out of their instruments.

“Bathroom,” Santana shrugs, sipping her drink when suddenly Britt lays a gentle hand on her shoulder.

No one sees Blaine say something into the lead singer’s ear.

Jesse finds Finn sooner than Finn turns to look for them as he claps Finn on his back, tugging Kurt back to the group by their clasped hands. Finn nods to them, half-relieved to see Blaine nowhere near them. As much as he wants to see Kurt and Blaine's relationship progress, he doesn’t want his friend to do anything he’d regret in the morning.

At first the thought of getting Blaine buzzed as to give him a little more leeway in acting on his feelings seemed like a brilliant idea; now that Finn got that accomplished _for_ him, he wasn’t so sure, with Jesse being there to witness it.

The pair takes their seats to Santana’s left, and she seems to be hugely relieved by their company as Jesse orders one shot of Scotch for him and a glass of water for Kurt.

“Hey there, again,” Blaine’s smooth voice echoes from the speakers—Finn turns his head sharply, wide-eyed, to stare at the stage. So does the rest of the group, their voices dying mid-sentence as another rumble of cheers travels through the crowd. “I know you’ve been promised to ’ve gotten rid of us by now,” Blaine murmurs into the mic in a coyly indifferent manner, adjusting its holder’s length. “But I was just—so inspired by the good gentlemen over here”—he first splays his hand over his chest and then gestures with a broad sweep of his arm to where the band’s members each stayed in their place, the lead singer joining them in the back—“that I didn’t wanna let you go just yet,” Blaine finishes, glancing up demurely into the audience, his eyes smoldering as they land on Kurt sitting at the bar with the rest of their crew.

Santana breaks into a devilish, mischievous smile, waving over to Blaine with an encouraging _whoop_ ; Sam and Britt, oblivious to what’s really going on, hang on to Blaine’s every word, intrigued; Kurt is frozen with a deadpan expression, eyes locked on Blaine quietly. As if two drastically different emotions are grappling for dominance on his face, effectively rendering him emotionless as a result of it.

“Oh my _God,_ was he _drinking?”_ Jesse asks Santana with an impish smile, leaning over to her; his hand rests behind Kurt’s back on the bar top.

“You got it?” Blaine’s muffled voice resonates across the club weakly when he turns away from the mic to address the band.

The lead singer checks with their keyboard guy, then nods to Blaine.

“Aright,” Blaine says as his lips bump into the mic when he turns back to the public. “Now _this_ will be a little different from what you’ve heard from me so far,” he prefaces in a soft, preoccupied voice as he makes sure his mic is all set. “You and my friends both, man,” Blaine mumbles mindlessly, eliciting an incredulous snicker from Santana.

Blaine is so cute when he’s drunk.

When the lead singer claps Blaine on his shoulder as his good-to-go cue, Blaine quits fiddling with his mic, pulling his hands down. “Whoop, here we go.”

The guy behind the keyboard generates the first electronic sound, tweaking the knobs on his synthesizer as Blaine takes a little step back, hanging his head to look at his feet before—

_one_

—he grabs the mic, belting the single note out; all members of the band are nodding in the dark, letting Blaine and the keyboard guy nail the opening.

_two_

—Blaine shouts, clutching onto the mic stand.

_three_

—he takes a step back, then surges back to the front—

_one, two, three, four!_

Blaine shouts out before he bends in half as the whole club suddenly flashes with bright scarlet lights—the band behind him blasts into a crisp, up-tempo beat, livening the whole stage up with a vigorous, discoish motif.

Blaine keeps his hold on the mic stand, turning to nod at the electric guitarist who musters out a wispy, brisk, drawn-out solo with fitful pauses in concord with sharp halts in the drumbeat.

The audience roars their cheers of encouragement when they recognize the song. Moving to the music, the public seems to absolutely love this remastered version of it that edges off more into electronic territory rather than its original rendition in indie-rock fashion.

“Oh. My. Fucking. God,” Jesse enunciates each word in awe as he makes a fuss to fish his cell phone out of his back pocket. “This is it, Kurt!” he shouts to Kurt over the music. “This is Blaine going rogue!” he trumpets, switching to the video recorder on his iPhone.

Kurt is _motionless,_ stunned, numb, and _all_ of these things—eyes dashing hectically across the stage, cheeks flushing up—almost as if he’s deeply, utterly, so very much failing to comprehend what he’s seeing right now.

_you are the girl_  
_that i’ve been dreaming of_  
_ever since_  
_i was a little girl_

Blaine cradles the microphone, all but _moaning out_ the lyrics with his eyes squeezed shut, eyebrows drawn together in a concentrated frown. His upper body seems to be strained in an effort to be still as he sings into the microphone, yet his feet tramp and stamp and stomp with vibrant energy bubbling up inside him as his foot pops then kicks the floor.

_one!_  
_i’m biting my tongue_

Jesse seems to be enjoying himself behind the camera, letting out a wheezing _whoop_ of encouragement.

_two!_  
_he’s kissing on you_

Blaine shoves his hand into the curly mess on his head as Kurt’s eyes, placid and clouded and hard, bore into him.

_three!_  
_oh why can’t you see?!_

—Blaine literally _wails,_ his throat strained, the veins on his neck swelled to the point of appearing feral as he sinks down a little at the stand.

 _“One, two, three, four!”_ the band behind him chants—and then he bounces up, wrenches the mic out of the holder, and dives right into the chorus.

 _“The word’s on the streets, and it’s on the news,”_ he sings animatedly as he struts up to the front. _“I’m not gonna teach him how to dance with you,”_ Blaine wiggles his hand by his neck, signaling for ’ain’t-gonna-happen’. _“He’s got—two left feet and he bites my moves,”_ Blaine mimics an awkward dancing for a second, his movements free and graceful even as he parodies clumsiness. _“I’m not gonna teach him how to—”_ he throws his head back sharply, watching the crowd finish for him.

When the song enters its interlude, Blaine turns his back to the audience, dance-walking in a smooth, nimble manner toward the stand where he puts the mic back, carefully tucking it into the holder. The spotlight switches back to the girl with the electric guitar nailing her recurring solo as she flips her short hair to the side with the movement of her head.

In the dark, Blaine wanders off to trace a couple of idle circles on stage, his gait bouncy and giddy and absent-minded as his weak fingers get a handful of the sweaty, curly strands that keep getting into his eyes. He collects whatever his hands managed to get a hold of into a small, unkempt ponytail on top of his head and before he’s even finished—he’s back at the mic, singing.

_you are the—girl_  
_that i’ve been dreaming of_

Finn hides his face in his fancy cocktail, gobbling up the rest of his drink—he isn’t very sure now if it’s a good thing that Kurt is the sober one to give them a ride home this time, or not so good, seeing how Blaine is apparently _gonzo,_ and Finn’s no good to him if he can’t take him out of this place like, _right fucking now,_ before he gets to say any other word to Kurt or—better yet—sing it for the whole world to know.

_you are the girl_  
_that i’ve been dreaming of_  
_ever since..._

_“Ever since!”_ Blaine wails with a strained grimace, his face flushed with fervor and damp with sweat. 

_one_

—the whole public now chants.

 _“I’m bitin’ my tongue,”_ Blaine sings with a slight, counterfeit accent.

_two_

_“He’s kissing on you huh!”_ Blaine shouts it out as his knees bend a little.

_three!_

_“Oh why can’t you see?!”_ he writhes at the stand, his voice a whining stretch of _sexiness._

Not sure what to expect, Finn sneaks a glance over his shoulder at Kurt, trying to stay out of Jesse’s camera. Kurt’s expression is a stark contrast to every single soul in this club; it’s almost _solemn_ against the row of animated faces next to him: Jesse’s beam, Santana’s cheering, Britt’s and Sam’s laughter.

There is not a single trace of laughter in Kurt’s eyes, deep-dark-gray and heavy as they watch Blaine perform, following his every move, catching his every glance.

_i’m not gonna teach him how to..._

_“Uh uh uh uh uh uh the second I do, I know we’re gonna be through; I’m not gonna teach him how to dance with you,”_ Blaine prances to the front, one hand gripping the mic as the other one gestures in wild, fervent motions. _“He don’t suspect a thing, I wish he’d get a clue,”_ he points _straight at the bar_ before he pulls his hand back to hold a fistful of air as he looks down to the side sharply. He holds a beat like that before he finishes his line, _“I’m not gonna teach him how to!”_ He rushes off to bounce around the stage in sharp, twisting motions, bursting with energy, as the crowd chants the lyrics for him.

It seems to Finn that Kurt sees right through what’s happening to Blaine now and ever—and maybe even _then some,_ that he maybe even sees more than Finn does and more than Finn knows.

_one!_

One thing Finn sure as hell knows (no matter how buzzed he may be) is that the stormy look in Kurt’s eyes won’t augur well for tonight—not for Jesse, not for Blaine in this state, and ultimately—not even for Kurt, whatever it might be that stands behind that dark gaze of his.

_two!_

Finn fishes out his cell phone, hastily thumbing the screen as he clicks on the _Uber_ app.

_three!_  
_one two three four!_

Finn puts his glass on the bar top, then beckons the bartender hurriedly to close his tab.

_(i’m not gonna teach him how to)_  


_“Uh! Uh!”_ Blaine shouts into the mic, swinging the stand back and forth, _“He’s got—two left feet and he bites my moves—”_

_(i’m not gonna teach how to)_

_“Not gonna teach him how to dance”_ —Blaine draws the note out long and strong, flat-out _desperate_ — _“with you,”_ he jerks back, panting—and then surges back up to the stand, cradling the mic for the few remaining lines he has.

Finn takes his credit card back in a hurry before he hobbles through the crowd, trying to make his way toward the stage.

_how to dance with you_  
_oh!_  
_no!_  
_no!_  


Blaine’s chest puffs as he shouts each word with a jerking motion, the band behind him pepping the tension up as they near the song’s climax.

_i’m not gonna teach him how to_

No one seems to notice Finn push through the cluster of people bouncing to the final beats as the song culminates, the lightning in the club alternating between red and violet flashes.

 _“Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance!”_ —Blaine screams his final words as he drops to his knees—the lights fade out—the crowd bursts into roaring applause, the loudest of them being Jesse and Santana.

Kurt’s face is blank, cheeks are slightly flushed, and breathing is a little ragged as he keeps watching the spot Blaine was last seen at even as the club goes pitch-black.


	4. it's all downhill after the first kiss

What happens that Sunday feels acutely out of place and long overdue all at once, like an excerpt from a whole other life that's too bizarre to be Blaine’s but could well have been.

Blaine doesn’t say anything to Kurt after serenading him on Friday—doesn’t get to; Finn crosses his path right when Blaine’s stepping off the stage, pats him on his back, then gently maneuvers him through the crowd, edging him to the back exit. They leave the club before their friends’ whistling and cooing gets within Blaine’s earshot. Everything Santana shouts as she teases him and Jesse calls as he assures Blaine that everything’s been made part of the record dies in the din of other people’s voices. Kurt—is the only one quiet, watching Blaine’s and Finn’s backs disappear into the crowd with heavy, darkened eyes.

Blaine spends the next day pulling his hair out with the memory of it—hazy enough for him not to die from shame, but still _there_ enough to make the blush crawl down his neck.

The worst thing is that the flashbacks of the Friday night keep creeping up on him in every little thing he tries to busy himself with to escape those. They find their way back into his mind no matter what, keep on badgering him, making him stop and flinch and want to curl up on himself in the corner every goddamn time.

By the end of the weekend, he's in a desperate need for a good, long jog; it’s as clear to him that he will go mad unless he goes out as the fact that he needs the oxygen to breathe.

Unless he clears his head by the start of the next week, all those fictional excuses for skipping practice sessions he furnished for Kurt the other week might actually come true.

June is in its final breaths, the evening air is warm and misty, tinted with a sunset blush; Blaine tries to even out his breathing as he runs the Scioto Trail. Setting for his fastest pace—the one he falls back on whenever he has some spare energy to burn—he passes families walking, children biking, older ladies and gentlemen brisk walking as his own feet fall in sync with the soulish tune clacking in his earbuds.

_my line_  
_your line_  
_don't cross them lines_  
_what you like_  
_what i like_  
_why can't we both be right_

“Come on, Kurt, you can still go with us?” Rachel suggests in what she hopes an offhand voice, eyeing Kurt from under her long eyelashes. She licks at her plastic spoon timidly, then puts it back into her Häagen-Dazs carton. The wavy strands of her hair, dyed ever since she moved to NY, bathe in the gentle sunlight that paints a rose-gold hue on them.

She is dazzlingly beautiful.

Kurt licks at his own spoon, savoring the sweet mango freeze on his tongue before he tilts his head back a little. “I might surprise you”—he murmurs around his mouthful—“but we Ohio people don’t usually get homesick for other small towns of Ohio scales.”

Rachel chortles, almost in relief at the joke; a family with two kids passes them where they stand by the lushly green tree. Rachel smiles at the children cavorting around their parents as the latter stroll down the trail, chatting in pleasant voices.

It's a nice evening to be out here at Scioto Mile, the Sunday crowds offer a strange sense of comfort, the breeze is warm, and the sunset is tickling their faces pleasantly.

“ _‘We Ohio people.’_ Since when do you refer to yourself as an Ohio person?” Rachel teases him warmly but is suddenly heedful of the innuendo her question conveyed.

Kurt doesn’t seem to be, though, as he arches a challenging eyebrow and gives Rachel just as playful an answer as hers was the question.

“Ever since you, Miss Rachel Berry, moved to New York City. Or are you trying to tell me you’re as much of a New Yorker as I am of an Ohio man?” he demands with a playful decorum.

Rachel laughs, looking to the side, then back up at Kurt, gazing up at him with an adoring, radiant smile.

“Besides,” Kurt says. “Don’t come raining on my parade: Ohio has something New York doesn’t,” he avers smugly, jutting his chin forward.

“...What is it?” Rachel asks him, incredulous, when he doesn’t finish the thought but takes another bite of his sorbet instead.

He blinks at her in fabricated innocence as he swallows down the ice cream.

“Hot boys, of course,” he responds in a _duh_ voice.

Rachel giggles. Of course Kurt would say that.

“Like Finn, for one,” Kurt adds, and now it’s his turn to be gazing at her coyly, fiddling with his sorbet. He knows just how tough the long-distance relationship has been on Finn and how often it gets lost on Rachel blinded by the brightness of the Broadway spotlight.

Even now, all Kurt gets from her after mentioning Finn is an averted gaze and a dreamy smile that tugs at the corners of her lips gently coated with a lip gloss. 

It doesn’t take Rachel long to recover, though, as she looks back up at Kurt, suddenly remembering, and pokes him in the stomach. “And _Jesse,_ isn’t it right?” she asks Kurt in a teasing voice, agog to hear all the details. “We've spent the whole day together and I haven’t heard you say his name once!”

Kurt smiles, lifting a yet another spoonful up to his mouth to take a bite.

“Have you broken up?” she gasps, but then sees Kurt’s smile and finds herself mirroring it. “Will I meet him?” she asks with an impish beam then. “Will he be tonight at our dinner? Will he come tomorrow to karaoke?”

Eyes closed, Kurt shudders with quiet laughter as he licks his spoon before putting it back. “We’ll see,” is all he says with an enigmatic shrug of his shoulders.

“You _better_ see to him being there, because I am not leaving until I meet him,” she warns him half-jokingly as she picks up her own spoon that has sunk into her strawberry-flavored sorbet and points it at Kurt.

It’s moments like these that Kurt remembers just how much he loves her—if for no other reason than for her appreciation for sorbets (which honestly wasn't that big of a feat on her part as those were all but the only types of ice cream she, as a vegan, could eat.)

“Oh damn,” she mumbles around her mouthful, watching the trail to the left of Kurt and behind his back. “You weren’t kidding about hot guys around here, were you?”

Kurt closes his lips around his spoon, raising his eyebrows absent-mindedly before he turns to glance over his shoulder.

The spoon lingers on his bottom lip, tugging it down, as his eyes linger on the person jogging his way towards them.

Blaine is—

Well.

Blaine is wearing a loose black tank top with green running shorts that are a little _too_ baggy for Kurt’s liking; his hair is a sweated curly mess, dangling over his temples and his forehead; the white cable of his earbuds sways along his chest as his feet flit over the dry pavement, bouncing his body up with the taut strength of his leg muscles. He's looking in front of him, jaws tightly set in a gorgeous way that highlights his cheekbones as he tries to control his breathing.

Weakly, Kurt plunges the spoon back into his container, eyes overcast with something hard and solemn. With a grave expression, he takes in Blaine’s strong calves furry with hairs that were bleached by the summer sun now almost invisible against his olive skin.

Rachel eyes the back of Kurt’s head as Kurt ends up turning his whole body away from her, his mien palpably brooding.

“Kurt?” she asks hesitantly. “Kurt!” she hisses when he—suddenly—leaves her with no acknowledgment whatsoever, headed for the stranger approaching them.

 _“Whatareyoudoing?”_ she whispers to Kurt's back furiously, watching him stride down the hill in a measured, dangerously determined pace—yet _still_ with a coquettish coyness to it, even now, the blithe way he bounces on his feet when he reaches the pavement, the gentle—albeit assertive—way he crosses the guy’s path.

“Jesus, just—” Rachel dithers, throwing her hands up, flustered at Kurt's lack of understanding of what's socially acceptable sometimes. “Okay,” she mumbles at last and twirls around, flipping her hair as she turns her back to them and the awkwardness of the situation Kurt’s about to put her in.

Eyes boring into her sorbet, Rachel prods it with her spoon, hoping to seem detached enough to fool the guy into thinking she's not with Kurt at all.

_there ain't no money left_  
_why can't i catch my breath_  
_gonna work myself to death_

When Blaine sees him, it’s like a bolt from the blue—it’s like he appears out of nowhere, suddenly in his way, suddenly crossing his path, and suddenly Blaine has to rein his pace in unless he wants to slam into him. And Blaine most certainly doesn’t, himself a sweated, panting, nasty mess as he halts a few feet away from Kurt all clean and neat and elegant and perfect.

The sun behind Kurt’s back is setting, and Blaine pants, staring up at Kurt in front of him who’s like a wraith from the Friday night’s fiasco, the same haunting beauty and wistful darkness about him as he stares back at Blaine. He stares back at Blaine like he sees through every little thought bustling inside Blaine’s head, and is forbearing with it, knowing _so much_ it makes Blaine feel pathetic with his cluelessness.

Blaine tugs at his earbuds, letting them slip out of his ears, partially due to his sweaty skin, and breaths out, “Hey— _Kurt_. What are you...?” he leaves the question open-ended as his chest heaves and his hands reel the cable in around his iPod before he slips it into the pocket of his shorts, eyes searching Kurt’s face.

Having heard the stranger say Kurt’s name, Rachel turns her head to sneak a curious look their way.

Kurt’s expression is forebodingly serious, his eyes a breathtakingly livid shade of gray as they pierce into Blaine’s; Kurt’s hand stirs the ice cream inside his carton with a plastic white spoon. Blaine’s heart tumbles inside his chest at the conjecture that Kurt’s about to comment on Blaine serenading him the other day—they never talked about it—they never talked since—yet before Blaine gets to open his mouth to explain himself, Kurt interjects.

“Hold my sorbet.”

Blaine gawks down at the carton of the yellow-colored ice cream that Kurt holds out for him to take, and without stopping to question it, Blaine wraps his warm hands around the cold container. He sniffs in a breath as he starts to look up, about to ask Kurt what it’s all about until—

Kurt doesn’t give him a warning. The same sullenly determined look on his face, Kurt steps closer, eyes fixed on Blaine’s mouth, grim and quiet and sure as his hands—reach up to cup the line of Blaine’s jaw— _barely there,_ barely touching his damp skin, and Blaine _barely_ gets to see him up close when he looks up as Kurt—closes the few remaining inches of space between their faces—

His lips press to Blaine’s, so _soft_ and smooth and cold and wet from the ice cream against Blaine’s hot ones—

_i don’t wanna fight no more_  
_i_  
_don’t wanna fight no more_  
_i_

Blaine gasps for breath like a drowning man, his pulse suddenly racing through the roof as he opens his eyes wide to stare at Kurt’s face pressed against his own, forehead to forehead, noses smashed together, lips parted as they breathe in, breathe out shakily.

Kurt’s eyes are closed, calm and peaceful and tranquil; his eyelids flutter. Scattered around the bridge of his nose, Blaine notices a sea of tiny little freckles—so pale Blaine never knew they existed before. Kurt tilts his head to the side a little, lips ghosting over Blaine’s gaping mouth teasingly—but it seems like Kurt _himself_ is the only one he’s teasing here as he nudges his nose against Blaine’s, breathing Blaine in, cradling his jaw.

He doesn’t seem to be in the _least_ affected by Blaine’s _whole world as it comes crashing down around him,_ everything he’s built around what he thought was set in stone, what he thought he knew about himself, the life he thought was his—Kurt just tightens his grip on Blaine’s clammy skin as his fingers slip further around the back of Blaine’s neck and bury themselves in Blaine’s sweaty mop of curls.

Blaine’s hair must be all greasy and damp and gross, yet Kurt grabs two avid handfuls and just—tugs Blaine’s face closer to his, guiding it to press their lips together, again.

The tiniest, _softest_ touch of Kurt’s lips ignites Blaine’s whole body, sending a sweet, shuddery itch down his skin; Blaine lets out a quiet _mewl,_ eyelids dipping as his lips timidly—instinctively—find their way around Kurt’s bottom lip to press a gingerly _kiss back._

Incited by the response, Kurt presses his face into Blaine’s, collecting Blaine’s head in his hands; Kurt’s mouth falls open feverishly— _angrily,_ almost, as he squeezes his eyes shut. His hands slide back along the sides of Blaine’s jaw, fingertips biting into the slick, sweaty skin on Blaine’s throat as Kurt catches all of Blaine’s hot, ragged breaths with his slack mouth.

Blaine’s pretty sure he starts to hyperventilate, heart pounding in his chest, mouth blindly searching for Kurt’s mouth as his fingers threaten to squeeze the ice cream out of the carton Kurt left for him to hold.

Kurt prods Blaine’s upper lip with his teeth, jutting his head up with the motion; one of his hands slides down Blaine’s collarbone while the other one cups the back of Blaine’s head.

Blaine lets out a tiny whine as his mouth falls open, and Kurt _almost tells him ‘shh’_ with the way he slides his left hand back up Blaine’s chest to press his nails into the underside of Blaine’s chin, tilting Blaine’s head back for him. Kurt—opens up his own jaw wide and slides his tongue into the dry warmness of Blaine’s mouth.

Blaine’s breath hitches as he feels Kurt’s smooth, delicate, _so good_ tongue glide against his, letting Blaine taste a vestige of mango sorbet on it—the same sorbet that’s dripping down Blaine’s hands now, oozing over the brim of the carton Blaine’s crunched without even noticing.

Kurt slides his tongue back out; Kurt waits a couple of _torturous_ seconds—both their eyes squeezed shut, their jaws hanging, Kurt’s fingernails piercing into Blaine’s jawline, tightening their grip—before Kurt’s tongue surges back inside and his hands haul Blaine’s head up even _closer._

Blaine whimpers quietly, gulping down against Kurt’s tongue as it laps up the inside of his mouth, coaxing ragged little breaths out of Blaine each time it slides out as a short respite for Kurt to angle his head against Blaine’s a little better.

Blaine’s whole body _swims_ with a vertiginous thrill that sweeps him up high until it ebbs away gently only to come crashing at him even harder—fueled by the movement of Kurt’s tongue against his, languid and unhurried and sure as it massages Blaine’s palate, Blaine’s gums, Blaine’s teeth.

 _Floating,_ Blaine starts to work his tongue against Kurt’s, tilting his head to accommodate the changes in angle, trying to find their own special rhythm—Kurt’s index fingers slide behind Blaine’s sweaty ears as Kurt cups Blaine’s head protectively with both of his hands.

Rachel just stands there, _jaw-hanging,_ watching Kurt and this hot mess of a jog guy devour each other’s faces right there in the middle of the Scioto Mile, right in the way of families and children and joggers passing by who have to circle them awkwardly, hindered by their presence.

They _kiss,_ moving their heads left to right, mouths sliding against each other in smooth, graceful motions, all teasing pecks and kittenish licks, Kurt’s hands cupping Blaine’s jaw, Blaine’s hands wringing the poor sorbet carton.

At some point Kurt pulls his face back a little—only to have Blaine’s face in his hands follow as Blaine inches up on his tiptoes, defying to break the kiss, his eyes still closed and mouth deliciously reddened.

Kurt glances up at Blaine’s face, the murky blue of his eyes now a bit clearer, lips still a bit parted before he—leans back in to press one more tender, closed-mouthed kiss to Blaine’s plump lips, stroking the sides of Blaine’s neck as his thumbs trace the outline of his Adam’s apple.

Faces pressed together, both of them try to ground themselves as Kurt’s hands slip down Blaine’s shoulders, down Blaine’s biceps—sweaty and firm and sweetly defined—down Blaine’s forearms fuzzy with rough hairs, over his hands smeared in the sugary yellow ice cream as Kurt finally gets hold of the crunched container.

Kurt sucks in a breath when he takes the carton back, his nose pressed to Blaine’s cheekbone as he daubs his own fingers in the slimy mango mess to straighten the carton back into its original shape.

Empty-handed, Blaine opens his eyes to stare down between their bodies at Kurt’s hands working the carton. Blaine runs his tongue over his lips, then swallows.

When the sorbet carton is somewhat restored, Kurt pulls his head back and looks down at Blaine. He makes sure Blaine’s eyes follow the movement of Kurt’s hands when Kurt raises them, first the left, then the right, up to his mouth and cleans his fingers of the ice cream with his tongue.

Blaine watches Kurt run his tongue kittenishly up each and every digit in a coy, demure manner—as if he didn’t know Blaine was watching at all, let alone the fact that Kurt’s own eyes are boring into him with a challenging murkiness in them.

When Kurt’s finished and lowers his hand, Blaine finally looks up from Kurt’s lips into his eyes. He holds the eye contact as intensely as Kurt if not more so, dark brown eyes piercing into the dark blue ones, serious, humorless, and heedful of what just happened between them.

Kurt stirs the melted sorbet with a spoon.

“Oh. My. Fucking. God!” Rachel squeals, suddenly by their side, hand covering her mouth as she gazes at them in a complete and utter awe.

Blaine doesn’t seem to be present as he keeps watching Kurt, unconcerned by their surroundings, his lips pressed together like he doesn’t want to lose the taste of Kurt’s mouth on them. Kurt swallows before he looks down at his sorbet somewhat coyly—as if somehow abashed by Rachel’s presence, a little out of his element.

And before Blaine is brought back down to earth, he catches a bashful smile tugging at the corners of Kurt’s lips that Kurt tries to hide behind a spoonful of the thawed ice cream.

“Is that him?” Rachel rushes to ask Kurt, almost gossip-like as she pounces him. “Are you Jesse?” she turns to Blaine without waiting for Kurt to answer.

Jesse’s name is what jolts Blaine out of his stupor, forcing him to finally recognize a stranger’s presence by their side. He turns his attention to her slowly, eyeing her a couple of absent times before fixing his gaze on her for good.

He recognizes her without having to go through the introductions; a twinkle of something so _free_ in her eyes, an air of something so vibrant about her. She looks like a crisp, breezy New York night in all of its glory, no better way to put it.

Despite the ridiculous circumstances under which Blaine sees her for the first time, he catches himself mirroring her radiant, sparkling smile. How can one not?

“I’m—no, um.” He turns to glance at Kurt who turns to glance at Rachel.

“Oh what?” Kurt asks her, nonchalant. “Oh, no. Rachel, please meet Blaine, a friend of Jesse’s. So as mine,” Kurt shrugs a shoulder coquettishly before he takes another bite.

Rachel gawks up at Kurt in bewilderment, a delicate hand covering her mouth.

No matter how much Blaine tries to stay focused, he finds his gaze drawn back to Kurt. The casual way Kurt stirs his sorbet, the relaxed way he licks his lips before pressing them together, and Blaine’s just left standing there, watching Kurt silently.

The awkward silence deteriorates when Rachel turns to stare at the hot mess of a Kurt’s boyfriend’s _friend_ to her left. The guy keeps watching Kurt sidelong with dark eyes, seemingly with no care for the world around them after what Kurt has just put him through.

“You know what?” Rachel blurts after a couple of silent moments, glancing between them. “Let’s just go with it,” she hisses mischievously with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Hi! My name is Rachel Berry,” she tells Blaine as she holds her hand out, excitement rolling off of her in waves. “It’s so nice to meet you!” she chirps. “Kurt has told me abso-lutely _nothing_ about you!” she turns to arch an impish eyebrow at Kurt mid-sentence that lets him know she’ll be demanding an explanation later.

Blaine looks awkwardly between the hand Rachel offered him and his own fingers smeared in Kurt’s sorbet. When she turns her attention back to Blaine after sharing a telepathic conversation with Kurt by means of her suggestive glances, Blaine offers her an apologetic smile.

“Oh!” she says suddenly. “Hold that for me,” she shoves her own carton with rose-colored ice cream into Kurt’s hands, fumbling with her purse. “Here,” she says, flipping her wavy strands back when she holds out an opened pack of wet wipes to Blaine. “For those of us who like to clean our hands old-fashioned way,” she adds as she flashes a teasing smile Kurt’s way.

Blaine thanks her and pulls one piece of cloth out, stealing a glance at Kurt when he starts to wipe his hands.

Kurt’s cheeks _flush up_ sweetly at Rachel’s comment; he ducks his head, fidgeting with his sorbet, smiling.

Blaine can’t help a foolish smile that lights up his own face at the sight of Kurt _blushing._ He can’t take his eyes off of him as he cleans his hands, a sight so exotic Blaine never could’ve imagined it in his head until he saw it and yet so _natural_ Blaine wants to see it more often.

He also wants to squeeze Kurt in a hug so tight the other boy won't be able to breathe, but he tries to keep it together.

Blaine thanks Rachel again, crumpling up the dirty cloth in his hands before he shoves it into the pocket of his shorts. Then, he properly stretches out his hand.

“Blaine Anderson,” he introduces himself, flashing her a charming smile. Impressed, Rachel takes his hand. “Well _I_ heard a lot about you—from Finn, mostly”—Blaine clarifies, causing Rachel to point a comic, sideways glance at Kurt—“so it’s nice to finally put a name to a face.”

Rachel’s mouth makes a silent ‘aw’ before she breaks into a flattered smile, shaking Blaine’s hand enthusiastically.

“I may not have heard your name before, but it makes the two of us now,” she reassures him with a pleasant smile as she takes back her sorbet from Kurt. “And since you and Finn seem to know each other, dare I hope that I will see you tonight at our dinner?” She invites Blaine indirectly, arching her eyebrows. “My life in New York tends to get a bit lonely at times, so I’m dying to get the most of your little-soul-rock family while I’m here,” she explains with a modest smile.

Blaine chuckles, chancing an unsure glance at Kurt by her side who quietly tends to his sorbet.

Rachel turns to look up at Kurt and nudges him in the stomach mid-bite.

“Ouch,” he protests around his mouthful, but quickly concedes what she wants of him. “Do come, Blaine,” he says in a low voice after he swallows, eyes downcast, hands still fidgeting with his carton. Blaine’s eyebrow arches of its own accord: Kurt’s never avoided his gaze before.

Rachel watches an adoring grin ghost over Blaine’s mouth as he tries and fails to establish an eye contact with Kurt. She turns to gaze up at Kurt; the two are too adorable to be true.

“Alright then,” she coos, watching them. “Let’s not intrude into Blaine’s jogging routine any more than _we already have,”_ she suggests to Kurt once again with that teasing quality to her voice as she slides her hand through his arm. “Look forward to seeing you tonight, Blaine!” she singsongs as she tugs Kurt away and past Blaine.

Blaine’s head swivels as his eyes follow Kurt. When Rachel circles Blaine on their way off, Kurt and he nearly bump heads.

“Bye,” Kurt murmurs, smiling down at Blaine softly as he swishes by, inches between their faces.

“Bye,” Blaine rumbles, turning around to watch Kurt get dragged away, a smoldering heaviness in his hazel eyes as they bore into Kurt’s head of chestnut hair.

Kurt can’t seem to resist looking back at Blaine quietly as he and Rachel wander off, catching Blaine’s dark gaze with an ever-present coquettish twinkle in his clear, blue eyes.

And, just like that, Blaine is left standing alone in the middle of the Scioto Trail, his world thrashed upside down and put back in place in less than the past ten minutes.

*

The atmosphere inside Hummel-Hudsons’ that night reminds Blaine of the first night he stayed after the first practice he shared with Finn, the first time he let his gaze wander over Kurt’s pale features, the first time Finn caught him staring and filed it in his mind as Blaine ogling Santana.

The memory of it brings a smile to Blaine’s face despite his overall mood, and he grins foolishly, lifting his Corona up to his lips for a swig.

“Why do _you_ seem to be so happy?” Santana muses grouchily next to him on the couch, eyeing him with half-hearted suspicion. Her legs are crossed, her fancy boots brashly placed on the coffee table as she smokes her cigar, as usual, watching others slow-dance to one of Lou Reed’s relaxed, laid-back songs wafting from the speakers.

Blaine watches Finn and Rachel smile at each other radiantly, chatting while they move slowly in each other’s arms. Santana watches Britt lay her forehead on Sam’s shoulder as they sway gently.

“Just remembered something,” Blaine responds as he leans back into the couch, getting comfortable. “You sure you don’t want to join?” he asks, turning his head on the cushion to look at her.

She takes a drag, dropping her head back for greater effect when she lets a creamy puff of smoke out. “No thanks, I’ve got a cigar to smoke. And you”—she points her cigar at the Corona bottle in Blaine’s hand seated between his legs—“‘ve got a beer to drink.”

Blaine stares at her for a couple of moments longer before he shakes his head softly and rolls his eyes a bit, turning back to watch everyone else dance.

_and maybe you and I could fall in love_  
_regain the spirit that we once had_

Kurt has his arms stretched out and draped loosely over Jesse’s shoulders as they sway in a slow, light-hearted manner, Jesse’s hands stroking Kurt’s back as they chat about something.

_you’d let me hold you and touch the night_  
_that shines so bright_  
_so bright with fright_  
_doin’_  
_a modern_  
_dance_

Against his better judgement, Blaine lets his gaze linger a tad too long on the keen way Jesse asks Kurt something, stroking his back, and the way Kurt’s gaze gets distant for a moment before he comes up with a deadpan humorous answer that draws a breathless chuckle out of Jesse’s throat.

“For the record,” Santana persists, gesturing with her cigar. “I say we breathe some wine into this beer-reeking house. It’s as if Corona was the only option on shelves in that miserable Lima town of theirs that they don’t know anything else now.”

Blaine turns to look at her funnily, swishing the sip of beer he just took around inside his mouth. He swallows. “I like Corona.”

She blows the smoke out. “Yeah, well maybe it was one of the reasons we didn’t work out,” she says, turning to look at him pointedly, a dark hue of seriousness in her chocolate-colored eyes that doesn’t last very long when Blaine snorts, suddenly splitting his sides. She watches him giggle, then tries to hide her own smile in the next drag she takes.

They draw one or two curious looks from the middle of the living room where the pairs are dancing.

“How miserable _are_ we, really?” Blaine asks her, clutching his stomach when he’s done rolling in laughter, a little buzzed with alcohol and the smoke from Santana’s cigar and—simply put, joy. “I mean what are the chances of two confused people stumbling upon one another, giving it a go, and being each other’s eye-opening experience that they both might just belong to the other team,” Blaine muses, looking at Santana with a goofy smile as he sways his knees a little to the melody.

She smiles softly, leaning forward as she reaches for the ashtray.

“Not so miserable as to quit the game altogether, are we?” She smiles at him over her shoulder as she stubs her cigar out.

Blaine watches her flip her heavy, black hair back as she gets up and faces him. Intrigued, he watches her lean down to press a warm, platonic peck on his lips before she hands her cigar over to him.

“Hold my cigar,” she calls out, pointing a finger at him when she starts to walk backward into the room.

Blaine finds himself bubbling with laughter, giving her the thumbs-up. He once held something for someone today, and _damn_ if it didn’t feel absolutely _magical._

He wishes her to experience the same feeling, with all his heart.

He hides his excited grin in the next swig of his beer he takes, watching Santana slide up to Britt from behind, catching her slim frame in a hug. Girls laugh; Sam takes an awkward step back, smiling at their intruder hesitantly. Santana and Britt start to rock from side to side to the music as Britt lays her hands on top of Santana’s forearms on her stomach.

Blaine watches Britt ask Sam to go fetch something for them in the kitchen to which he puts on a reassuring smile and nods before he turns to leave.

_i need a guru, i need some law_  
_explain to me the things we saw_

Blaine smiles, watching Britt turn around in Santana’s embrace and let her take Sam’s place in what they were doing before Santana interrupted them—slow-dancing. Britt smiles down at her, picking up a soft conversation as she plays with Santana’s hair on her back.

_it’s all downhill_  
_after the first kiss_

Blaine’s eyes fall on Kurt dancing with Jesse a few feet away; Kurt catches Blaine looking mid-sentence as he and Jesse chatter about something. Kurt pauses when he and Blaine catch eyes.

Quickly, Kurt regains his composure, regaling Blaine with a simple, brief smile as he picks up where he left off, looking back to Jesse. Like it doesn’t mean anything. Like it all means nothing.

Blaine would’ve felt something distinct at the brush-off gesture if he wasn’t too busy feeling happy for his friend and simply—enjoying the moment however it comes.

He suddenly realizes now that his job here is done, he has no business sitting on that couch in the back anymore. He doesn’t want to.

He stands up, takes the last swig of his beer (how quickly his bottle was gone) and leaves Santana’s cigar and his empty bottle on the coffee table. He nods and smiles at everyone as he squeezes past them on his way to the porch.

Rachel pinches Finn’s bicep, eyeing Blaine with a tight, concerned look on her face. Finn turns around to search for Blaine’s curly head.

“Yo, dude!” he calls him. “Are you leaving?”

Blaine raises his eyebrows. “Nah, I’ll just get some air, don’t worry ‘bout it,” he waves it off.

As he makes his exit, he doesn’t get to see Rachel shoot daggers at Kurt in Jesse’s arms. Blaine doesn’t get to see Kurt tighten his jaws at her glare and then give her the same stubborn brush-off he gave Blaine a minute ago.

*

He calls his mom, again, just like the last time he was sitting here before Kurt came to find him. Something in the scenery at night around here must conjure up memories of his childhood, the murky shapes of the trees, the hollow-blue patches of sky where there’s nothing, the narrow suburban street that mostly stays empty except for an occasional car or two passing by, flickering their headlights over the dark shadows.

Something in this must appeal to some of the oldest, faraway memories treasured and held dear in the back of his mind, some of those tucked too deep into the subconscious stratum to be considered retractable.

It’s the first time he feels uneasy talking about himself with his mom, the first time he has a distinct feeling that he’s deceiving her on some level, even if their conversation doesn’t ever come _close_ to the subject of his love life, let alone his sexual identity.

He never thought him being not what his mother thinks he is would be a problem, he never expected it to be any different from all those times she asked him if he’d been smoking and he told her that his clothes always smelled simply because some of his friends were.

If he is being completely honest with himself, he didn’t think about his mother at all when he did, in fact, reflect on his sexual orientation and what it means for him now moving forward.

“Blaine,” his mother’s soft voice calls his attention on the other end of the line. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks him, careful yet worried.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure,” he promises her, racking his brains as to what might have managed to give him out.

“You sound _too_ sure,” she notes dryly, only half-joking, but the lilt of her voice suggests that she will let it slide. “Alright then. Just don’t forget that I’m always here for you, alright? If you need to talk or something’s bothering you and you have no one else to turn to. You know that, right?”

Blaine stares at the grass, his grip on his cell phone tightening. He’d love to hear what she says after all is said and done.

“Of course I know that, mom,” he says and it takes him a great effort to keep his voice even and above the whisper.

“Alright, alright,” she teases, seemingly convinced that it was just her. “Drive safe, and don’t stay up late,” she advises him almost jokingly, knowing this would earn her a roll of eyes on Blaine’s part—which it does.

“Yeah, you too,” he says what he always says to that, turning to look back when the front door cracks open, throwing a beam of light on the stoop and boosting the music louder.

“Deal,” his mom says into his ear joyfully. “Love you.”

“Love you,” Blaine says, looking up at Rachel in the doorstep. “Bye.”

Blaine hangs up; Rachel glances over her shoulder carefully, sneaking a glimpse of others down the hallway, making sure she goes unnoticed before she moves to step outside and closes the door behind her silently.

In silence, Blaine watches her smile at him awkwardly and tuck the wavy strands of her hair behind her ears as she walks up to Blaine in a hesitant step.

“May I join?” she asks him, hopeful yet unsure.

Blaine nods; there’s an air of something dreadful about her, like she’s a parent who’s about to have ‘the talk’ with her child, and Blaine suddenly finds it very difficult to look forward to hearing what she has to say.

She makes sure to brush the dust off the wood before she lowers herself down next to Blaine, careful to straighten her black high-waist flared skirt.

They sit in silence for half a minute or so, looking at the sky and what not, before she makes an awkward gesture to Blaine’s iPhone, tucking another strand behind her ear. “That—a boyfriend or…?” she asks, jutting her chin at Blaine’s phone.

Blaine frowns, completely blanking as to what that’s supposed to mean.

“You said you loved—them,” she tries to explain. “I don’t mean to intrude, I just. I’m just trying to get the whole picture, after what I saw earlier today,” she adds ungainly, trying to lighten up the mood with a humorous reference.

Blaine blinks at her slowly, then turns to look down at the phone in his hands.

“No, that was my mom,” he tells her like it is, still watching his iPhone, the frown on his brow suggestive that he’s about to demand something in return.

Yet when he opens his mouth and turns to face her by his side, she lifts up a hand.

“I know,” she interjects with a knowing look. “I’m awful at this. I’m used to being upfront with people, asking them what I need to ask and telling them what they need to know, no sugar coating it. Or, at least with people I care about,” she adds with a ‘whatever’ grimace.

This makes Blaine’s irritation with her ebb away a little; he raises an eyebrow at her instead. She watches him, eyes searching his face like she’s about to laugh at herself, hand raised in a gesture asking if they’re okay.

“Okay?” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows at him before she chortles a quiet laugh. Blaine finds himself smiling too. “Uh, I know I’m terrible,” she says when she comes down from it, turning to gaze at him.

“Okay,” Blaine says with a laugh of his own; at least she’s honest about it. “What do you need to ask?”

She shifts where she’s sitting to face Blaine a little better. Her dark eyes are filled with an odd mixture of fright and…hope. She lets the silence stretch a little too long for it _not_ to be for the pure sake of dramatic effect.

“Do you care about him, a lot?” she asks in a soft voice, gazing into his eyes.

Blaine’s face changes at the question, a shade of something grim or maybe serious falls over it, but he doesn’t look away—just isn’t quick to answer either.

“I care about him too much,” is what he says and what he fails to say the way he intended to; his voice cracks into a whisper at the end and it has him glancing up at the sky, so very much _tired_ of _feeling_ this way. He swallows, closing his eyes with his head still thrown back.

“No, no no no no,” Rachel mumbles quietly, shaking her head as she moves a little closer to him, hovering her hand over the soft fabric of his sweatshirt on his forearm, not quite daring to touch him yet. Searching Blaine’s face, her eyes are filled with desperate longing to turn his train of thought around. “There is no such thing as caring about Kurt too much. Blaine,” she calls quietly, squeezing his arm. “Please look at me.”

He lowers his head down, opening his eyes with an apprehensive look in them. He couldn’t escape the distaste that raced through him at the sound of her voice like that, talking to him like she…was here all along, here with Kurt, and cared about him and his feelings with everything she had.

He tries to reel it in a little; if this was everything she had, who was she to blame?

“Kurt is such an _exceptional_ person,” she goes on to tell him, pressing a hand to her chest and closing her eyes to show how much she means it. “If you care about him as much as you say you do already, you just wait and see him with his guards completely down,” she promises, shaking her head at the veracity of it.

He can’t help his eyebrows from furrowing further as she keeps going.

“I know how hard it must be,” she says and Blaine winces at the actual _sincerity_ in her voice; how can a person be so inherently mistaken in time and place and the content of what she’s implying yet be so _genuine_ while doing so? It’s above him.

“No, scratch that, I can’t _imagine_ what it’s like meeting Kurt for the first time by the moment _Kurt_ was gone, but I—” she takes a moment to search for the right words, still squeezing Blaine’s forearm.

Blaine feels his heart thump with an awful presage of conflict, he _hates_ when people make him feel this way. Like they’re wrong, they’re wrong, they’re so absolutely wrong about him, and yet he feels the need to listen to them, be patient and let them talk and be wrong until it’s considered polite to interrupt and let them know just how awfully wrong they are.

He shudders in a bracing breath; she finds her words.

“If you managed to see through him like I have a feeling you did, I know you know it without me having to tell you that Kurt’s still _Kurt._ And I’m”—she takes a second to look up at the sky, shuddering with emotion—“just so happy you two met,” she looks down at him with a loving smile and genuine spark in her eyes. “I’m only worried you will mistreat his true self the way his counterfeit self deserves to be treated,” she says in the end, her voice laced with genuine worry.

Blaine bites his tongue to the very last moment, but he fails to stop his voice from sounding harsh when he asks her if she’s finished.

She blinks at him, suddenly clueless as to what could’ve caused his reaction, and it makes something mean and egocentric inside Blaine’s chest swell at the fact that he managed to replace the mighty-all-knowing look on her face with complete perplexity.

He slowly tugs his hand away, shifting in his seat to face her a little better too.

“Rachel,” he starts, ducking his head as he tries to ward off this irrational, childish grudge her words have stirred in him. “I know what you’re saying comes from the heart,” he looks up at her. “Thank you for that. Kurt is—lucky to have you in his life, he is,” he nods and he means it.

Her eyes search his face with no clue where he’s going with this.

“But the vibe I got from the little conversation we’ve had so far makes me question whether you truly have the whole picture of what’s been going on,” Blaine says, trying to present her with it in a gentle and civil manner. “Because you come across like you think you do,” he adds in a careful voice, watching her as he speaks.

She cringes in an uncertain, thrown-off-balance way. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, pulling back a bit, clearly taking offense.

“I care about Kurt very much,” Blaine repeats with an emphasis, heedless of what she asked him as he goes on. “If I look like some random awkward curly-headed wannabe-rockstar straight playboy to you who’s just going through a phase, I don’t blame you,” he says in a deadly serious, firm tone of voice, eyes fixed on her. “I _may_ have failed to get my point across well the first time, so here it comes again: _I’m_ not going _anywhere,”_ he enunciates it clear and unequivocal for her. He really can’t escape that little emphasis he puts on the _I_ in there and he barely holds off the invidious ‘contrary to you’ bit on the tip of his tongue. “But you also seem to have the wrong impression of what my relationship with Kurt actually is and are all too quick to underestimate it as a result of this.”

Rachel lets on a conciliatory, if slightly condescending, smile. “But Blaine, I have no way of knowing what your relationship is like: he hasn’t told me anything about you,” she chatters in a gentle voice with a hand pressed to her collarbone like this should explain everything.

Blaine chuckles, turns to look at the dark, empty road girding the front yard.

“Well that’s just it, Rachel,” he says when he turns back to her. “With all due respect,” he says, lifting up his hand. “Has it maybe occurred to you that _I’m_ not the reason why Kurt never mentioned me to _you?”_

Rachel draws back, for the first time getting what Blaine is getting at.

That maybe it had something to do with how _she_ is.

“I’m not postulating it for _me,”_ Blaine says when he sees her deflate. “Like I told you, no matter how much more I care about him than it’s requited, I’m not _leaving,_ so this isn’t me passing the buck. And trust me, I take no pleasure in picking up a conflict,” he adds, glancing at her sideways. “You seem like an exceptionally nice person who truly cares about her friend. I’m asking you this because I have a feeling no one else is going to.”

Rachel raises her eyebrows briefly with a judgmental tilt of her head as she looks down at her skirt.

“I may not have known Kurt for as long as you have,” Blaine concedes in a sad near-whisper, watching her watch her hands. “But I know him now, and that’s what matters.”

Silently, she looks up at him from the corner of her eye, fidgeting with her hands as she lets him talk.

“I take it you also _‘know it without me having to tell you’_ that Kurt doesn’t belong here,” Blaine says, air-quoting her own words with a bit of a smile. She rolls her eyes a little, breaking into a coy smile of her own. “So I guess what I’m still trying to understand is how…”

_…you let him stay._

_…you could fail him in such a crucial way._

_…you can sit here now lecturing me on how to be there for Kurt when you yourself are so very guilty of the thing you are preaching._

“…he stayed,” Blaine voices at last.

He doesn’t get to regret omitting his true thoughts when a painful expression crosses her face and she turns to look to the side, gazing at the road the way Blaine did before. When he takes in the heartbroken, wistful look in her eyes, he knows she knows it too, without him belaboring what already hurts.

“Yeah,” she says after a silent while, glancing up at the night sky. “I guess you could find the answer in that one to your first one,” she admits in a soft, bitter murmur, referring to Blaine’s first question if Kurt not filling her in on Blaine in his life had, in fact, everything to do with her and nothing to do with Blaine.

“I guess so,” Blaine echoes quietly, watching her.

After another minute of silence passes, Blaine gets up quietly and gives Rachel’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, about to head back inside.

Rachel squeezes her eyes shut when she hears him leave and blurts out just before his footsteps reach the front door, “Come to Lima with us.”

She turns around, looking up at him with an apologetic, hopeful smile and pleading eyes.

He stares at her dumbly with his hand frozen on the door handle, face gone perfectly blank.

“This is what I truly came here to ask you,” she says, her lips still stretched in a rueful smile. “I told you I _suck_ at it,” she blabbers as she hurries to get up. “I should’ve asked you right away because I came here scared out of my wits with no clue how to approach Kurt to talk about anything that matters after a year of empty conversations about _how was your day—great, and then I went to the bathroom, and then I went to do groceries; have I told you about that lady on the bus? She looked at me funny! But hey, you should come visit me one day!”_ Rachel spits out, mimicking her and Kurt’s empty talk over the phone and via Skype this past year without pausing to draw a single breath. “And then _you_ run out of the sunset and the next thing I know—he’s all over you, kissing you like he will _die_ if he doesn’t, holding you like you’re the single most precious thing that ever happened to him,” she prattles on and on incessantly as Blaine’s eyes go wide like saucers; he feels himself shiver at her words. “And then afterwards, after you ran off into the sunset the way you came”—she makes a funny gesture with her hand—“it just flowed, we just _clicked_ and we actually had an actual conversation, Blaine, no jokes and no diversions, even if it was something as simple as the narrative of how your little crew got _formed,”_ she breathes out in a small, raspy voice, desperate to make Blaine _see._

Speechless, Blaine blinks at Rachel, her words reverberating inside his head, making it hard for him to think.

Rachel purses her lips in frustration, looking at Blaine with desperate eyes. “I’m begging you,” she whispers quietly, folding her hands in a praying gesture as she lets the tips of her middle fingers touch her lips.

Blaine swallows bitterly before he mutters back, “Rachel, I’d be honored to come. But I won’t be setting my foot anywhere near Kurt’s hometown unless he tells me he wants me there. And I trust him to tell me if he does.”

Rachel processes the response she got, then lets her eyes roll back a little before she closes them. She wraps her arms around herself. “Okay,” she says quietly with a nod.

Blaine nods too with a small smile before he twists the knob to open the front door.

*

The karaoke night a couple of days later turns into a spectacular disaster.

Kurt and Jesse, Finn and Rachel, and Blaine are the first to show up at this place Finn picked up, not chiefly a karaoke bar but a bar that hosts Live Band Karaoke on Wednesdays, supposedly with the best collection of songs to choose from as well as the best type of crowd in Columbus; Brittany and Santana are running late.

Sam’s already left for Lima the day before; and it’s only a matter of three days until Rachel, Finn, and supposedly Kurt (who hasn’t given his final answer yet) leave as well.

Rachel and Finn chatter about something as the five of them are being ushered to the booth they reserved in advance. Blaine trudges behind Kurt and Jesse, taking notice of Jesse’s hand placed confidently on Kurt’s waist as they move through the dim-lit room, circling the busy tables.

Blaine thinks about how Rachel’s chirrup makes a nice enrichment to their group’s dynamic. Her exuberant personality will definitely be missed by him once she’s gone.

Once everyone is gone, Blaine corrects himself in his mind: even Jesse’s going back to his hometown for the 4th of July—one of those stringent family traditions he would never get away with forsaking.

Blaine thinks about how it’s either Kurt chooses to go to Lima, or he lets Jesse take him to Akron. Which would have the bonus of finally meeting his boyfriend’s parents.

Blaine thinks about how either way, it’s only going to be him and Santana here in Columbus. Blaine thinks about what kind of arrangements they could make to salvage their forthcoming lonely night, or maybe he could convince her to come barbecuing with his extended family who will be keeping his mother company that day.

The five of them snug themselves into their booth, Finn and Rachel squeezed in the middle, Blaine on the side, some space left for Britt and Santana on Jesse’s end of the curved seat. They ask for some water while they wait for the girls and hatch up a mischievous little ploy to make the fashionably-late ones pay for the first round.

They titter and smile devilishly and keep chatting as they get comfortable when it happens.

“Would you look at that,” a familiar voice with this repugnant, smarmy lilt to it drawls to Blaine’s left. _“Blaine._ Fancy meeting you here,” Sebastian says with that self-satisfied grin of his when he emerges out of nowhere by their booth, a fancy drink in his hand.

Blaine’s pupils blow wide; he slowly turns his head to the side to stare up at Sebastian with his face gone absolutely white.

“Please, don’t tell me you can sing,” Sebastian pouts flirtatiously, skimming his eyes over other faces in Blaine’s company. Everyone meets his gaze with a look of utter confusion.

“Um,” Blaine says after a couple of awkward moments pass. “I can…,” he says like he isn’t even sure why he lets the conversation flow.

Sebastian clicks his tongue, then turns to smile at Kurt as he points a _‘that-guy’_ finger at Blaine. “He ain’t making it any easier for us, is he?” he asks Kurt brazenly, rhetorically.

At this, Kurt’s eyes turn into lead; Jesse furrows his brow and turns a bemused look at Kurt as he drapes his arm over the back of Kurt’s seat.

“I’m Sebastian, by the way,” Sebastian goes on, stretching out a hand for Kurt to shake. Kurt just—stares at him, the look in his eyes hard as steel, inscrutable and unyielding and so dangerously quiet Blaine actually feels the fright race down his spine.

He doesn’t even flinch to respond in any way, let alone take the hand Sebastian offered.

“Ouch,” Sebastian says when his hand doesn’t end up being shaken, but the unfaltering grin on his face gives away just how unaffected he is by the snub. “Those were some nice moves though,” he lets Kurt know as he raises his drink at him in cheers before taking a sip.

Jesse frowns; Kurt just _stares._

Taking a gulp, Sebastian finally takes in the curly fellow sitting to Kurt’s right and flashes him a perfunctory, frankly disinterested smile.

“Oh by the way Blaine,” Sebastian rushes to say as if it only now occurred to him. “So since you never seemed to have called that number of mine, I presume you boys didn’t need my help with getting it on _after_ all?” Sebastian surmises, directing a malicious grin at Kurt.

A tint of recognition flickers over Kurt’s face and the steel in his eyes seems to grow ever thicker as Jesse gawks between everyone present with an amused beam he tries to hold back, looking like he doesn’t get why he’s the only one to find this utterly hilarious—before finally, he bursts into giggles, clutching his stomach as he shakes with suppressed laughter.

Finn, on the other hand, doesn’t find this funny in the slightest, sitting there red-faced and completely out of his depth; Rachel keeps nudging him furiously, giving him an ‘I-thought-you-told-me-everything’ glare askance, to which he keeps shrugging, giving her a panicked ‘I-thought-I-knew-everything’ look.

“Wait a minute,” Jesse says to Sebastian, lifting up his hand when he comes down from his snickering. “Let me get this straight. You think Blaine’s—not…?” he asks Sebastian incredulously, smirking up at him like the latter’s making a colossal fool of himself right now, especially with the presumptuous way he’s conducting himself while being so wholly wrong about the heart of the matter.

At Jesse’s naive confidence, Sebastian raises his eyebrows sharply, tilting his head back in surprise, then turns to look at Blaine like it’s only getting more interesting.

Blaine ignores him, trying to catch Kurt’s eye instead, full of compunction about all of this, hoping the hazel warmness in his own eyes would find a way to placate the imminent storm in Kurt’s.

When Kurt does eye him briefly, it’s like a bucket of cold water is unleashed over Blaine’s head. The unforgiving blue of Kurt’s gaze is razor-edged, cutting through Blaine’s heart like a hot knife through butter before Kurt—disregards him just like that and turns to watch Sebastian’s little show instead, eyes dead cold.

Sebastian turns back to Jesse, clearing his throat in lieu of commenting. “Sorry, and you are…?”

“Jesse St. James, Blaine’s _friend.”_

Sebastian eyes Kurt in Jesse’s embrace knowingly.

“And Kurt’s boyfriend,” Jesse adds in a gentle yet assertive manner, squeezing Kurt’s hand.

Sebastian only raises his eyebrows, ducking his head to look at his drink demonstratively as he presses his lips together in a smile he puts on an act of trying to hold back.

Jesse frowns at Sebastian’s obnoxious smirk, for the first time thrown off balance, for the first time sensing that something has escaped him, now just out of his reach. Kurt’s eye bore into the table, his jaws so dangerously set, his free hand crushed into a pale fist; Rachel has her mouth covered with her hand, her elbow propped on the table as she watches Finn at a numb loss with her huge brown eyes.

Blaine keeps watching Kurt, insistent.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says at last, turning to look at Blaine. “This is even more messed up than I thought,” he says with a sneer, so irritatingly pleased with himself. “Well, you know what? Let me just leave you three to it,” he says, regarding them all with an adoring gaze, beaming at them like the sweethearts they are, in his mind. “For once, you fellas might just get my job done _for_ me,” he says, pointing his cocktail at them before he turns to Blaine one last time. “Enjoy your night out, tiger.” He juts his chin at him, then brushes the back of his hand against the line of Blaine’s jaw before he leaves.

Blaine jerks back slightly, staring up at Sebastian like an animal locked up in a cage. Jesse grimaces in utter bafflement, mouthing _“what the fuck”_ as Sebastian retreats to his booth where a pack of similar-looking preppy-pompous-smug douchebags sit waiting for him.

An awkward silence ensues; Jesse looks at his friends, his face contorted with honest confusion; Rachel clears her throat and raises her hands to gather her hair into a loose braid; Finn sits a little flushed with his gaze fixed at something in the distance; Blaine scratches at the back of his curly head. Finally, Jesse’s eyes settle on the latter.

“I think I’m thirsty,” Kurt says suddenly, his voice laced with an aloof indifference as he gets up.

Jesse keeps watching Blaine as Kurt wiggles his way out of the booth and lays absent hands on Kurt’s hips when Kurt squeezes past him.

“What do you guys want?” Kurt asks, raising his eyebrows when he’s standing.

They make their orders, a little uneasy to look each other in the eye.

“What was all of that about, Blaine?” Jesse asks in an unsure voice as Kurt leaves.

“Sorry,” Blaine waves a dismissive hand. “It’s the guy who was hitting on me when you left that night, at the gay bar.”

Finn’s eyes go wide as Rachel turns to look at Finn, curious.

“Yeah, I figured as much,” Jesse mutters as his gaze wanders off to the side, watching Sebastian take shots with his friends. “The place’s full of his ilk,” Jesse mumbles, absent-minded. “But what was he talking about?” Jesse asks Blaine like he’s afraid to know the answer, eyeing him carefully.

Blaine looks up at him like a deer caught in the headlights. Shrugs.

“I have”—Blaine turns to look back over his shoulder where Sebastian sits—“no clue,” Blaine exhales when he turns back. “Must’ve thought I was with Kurt, or…,” Blaine suggests, gesturing with his hand.

Rachel and Finn share comically awkward glances.

“We left together, so…,” Blaine tries to elaborate clumsily.

“Ah,” Jesse nods, and nobody really notices the way he’s a little _too_ eager to take the point.

As the room gets filled with somebody’s singing, Jesse looks down at the phone he’s fumbling with on the table. Rachel purses her lips in sympathy when she and Blaine catch eyes.

*

 _“Well sometimes, I go out—by myself; and I look across the water,”_ Brittany sings, dance-walking gracefully around the cozy little podium in front of the large screen where the lyrics are being displayed.

 _“Oh-oh, yeah,”_ Santana chimes in next to her. _“And I think of all the things, what you’re doing,”_ she sings as Brittany dances around her. _“And in my head I paint a picture,”_ Santana leans back a little, maneuvering the mic away as her voice gets more intense.

They arrived shortly after the Sebastian incident and quickly sensed the tension in the air. It took Blaine one look of Santana’s dark eyes to motion with his head inconspicuously to the booth where Sebastian was at. Then, he texted her, _“The guy that gave me his number. Talked to us.”_

No one seemed to be in the mood for singing, so Santana took the initiative to drag Britt over to the little stage. The line wasn’t long to wait, and soon they were there, livening up the hitherto melancholy mood in this karaoke bar with their upbeat choice of song.

 _“Oh won’t you come on over? Stop making the fool—out of me!”_ Santana warbles, motioning with her hand as her voice jumps the notes skillfully.

 _“Oh why don’t you come on over, Valerie!”_ she and Britt sing in unison.

A few people from the crowd step up, energized by the girls’ performance. They find a spot by the stage where there’s a little bit of space and start to dance in a simple, joyful, unpretentious manner as they clap to the beat.

_Valerie_

_“Pa, pa-pa-da-pa!”_ Rachel, Finn, Jesse, and Blaine chant animatedly from where they sit, pressing hands to their mouths for better reverberation.

_Valerie_

A couple of others join the couple in the dancing area, singing along as they move.

Kurt sips at his drink, then runs the tongue over his lips silently.

_Valerie, Valerie_

Everyone at their booth seems to have disposed of the uneasiness Sebastian’s presence brought on, but Kurt still remains quiet, watching the girls perform with an inscrutable face as he drinks.

 _“Oh why don’t you come on over, Valerie!”_ Britt and Santana wrap it up together, stealing happy looks at each other from the corners of their eyes. Most of the audience claps, Blaine and Rachel cheer them on.

When the girls get to their booth, the guys and Rachel are too busy to squeeze at their hands and to drawl a teasing _“Nice!”_ to them—to notice the next person that steps onto the podium.

“Ah, let’s give it up for the girls, they _killed it,”_ Sebastian calls into the mic in what seems to be a genuine encouragement, clapping himself the best he can manage with a microphone in his hand.

Santana turns to look at him charily and brushes off a strand of her hair from her cheek as she and Brittany plop down next to Jesse. Jesse snuggles closer to Kurt in order to free up some space, him and Brittany not really paying attention.

Everybody else is.

“In fact, earlier this night I had the pleasure to make friends with their lively company over there,” Sebastian says in a smarmy, purring voice as he gestures to their booth, turning the audience’s attention to them. “And would like to dedicate this next song to my newly-made friends,” he says with a devilish smile, winking at Blaine when they catch eyes. “And don’t mind the pronouns, if I may ask you,” he mutters into the mic as an afterthought.

Kurt inhales, leaning back in his seat.

“Oh, that’s nice, isn’t it?” Britt asks everyone softly as the first chords strike, accompanied by the dulcet cymbal beat. Santana, being the furthest one out, turns to catch her eye and shakes her head no gently. “Oh,” Brittany mouths, losing her spirit with one look at Santana’s face.

When the chord pattern starts to ring a bell, Jesse leans forward a bit to get a better view of Sebastian where the girls sit blocking it. He frowns, turning to look at Blaine with a lost look on his face.

_Jesse is a friend_  
_yeah, i know he’s been a good friend of mine_

Blaine’s face is perfectly blank, heart in his throat, as he beholds the performance Sebastian puts on for him. For _them,_ for fuck’s fucking _sake._ If Blaine thought their earlier encounter was as disastrous as it could possibly get, he hasn’t known life until _now._

Kurt rolls his eyes and crosses his arms, still laid-back in his seat, not even bothering to act like he’s surprised.

_but lately something’s changed, it ain’t hard to define_  
_Jesse’s got himself a boy and i want to make him mine_

Finn and Rachel almost synchronically raise their hands to cover their mouths, eyes blown wide in horror. Santana, on the other hand, straightens her back domineeringly and turns her whole body to face Sebastian, piercing him with a death stare. She flexes her jaws.

_and he’s watching him with those eyes_  
_and he’s loving him with that body—i just know it!_

Sebastian sings _flawlessly,_ closing his eyes with no care for the actual lyrics being streamed behind his back.

Jesse watches Blaine while Blaine keeps his eyes fixed on Sebastian on purpose, feeling his cheeks go hot and cold under the demanding fierceness of Jesse’s gaze.

_and he’s holding him in his arms late late at night_  
_you know i wish that i had Jesse’s boy!_

Rachel looks between Blaine, Kurt, and Finn like a desperate fish cast on a shore, helpless and clueless as to what to do now; Finn presses his lips in frustration, curling up a fist. Blaine is motionless, his back turned to Finn, Kurt, and Rachel, his profile turned to Jesse, Britt, and Santana. Even if he wanted to look at either one of them, he wouldn’t let himself.

 _“Where can I find a man like that?”_ Sebastian belts out right before the music ceases to play—a silent pause—and on goes the next verse. _“I’ll play along with this charade,”_ Sebastian sings, his voice gone soft, and Rachel _would probably_ note his vocal skills if she wasn’t so distracted with _losing her mind_ over the calamitous straits their situation just got into! _“That doesn’t seem to be a reason to change,”_ Sebastian keeps on going, making lively faces as he sings.

Eliciting _no_ response from Blaine who has his eyes _glued_ to the weirdo on stage, Jesse turns his head to look at Finn and Rachel, wondering if they have an idea in mind of what the actual fuck is going on.

At the sight of Jesse’s lost face, Rachel averts her gaze downward. Finn clears his throat and lifts his drink up to his mouth, opting to watch the performance.

_“You know I feel—so—dirty when they start talking cute; I wanna tell him that I love him but the point is pro’bly moot—And he’s watching him with those eyes!”_ Sebastian belts out, hugging his own waist as he wiggles his shoulders, overtly mocking. _“And he’s lovin’ him with that body—I just know it!”_

“I’ll go get some air,” Kurt’s casual, distant voice echoes around their booth against the loud music when Kurt gets up and tries to squeeze past Jesse, Britt and Santana.

Jesse’s attention is quickly dispersed when Kurt starts to leave; he’s torn as he tries to grasp what’s happening all around him, and before his hand reaches out to touch Kurt’s thigh—Kurt’s out and going.

Blaine, being the furthest one out on the other end, watches the back of Kurt’s head disappear into the crowd near the exit that leads to the smoking area. Finally, Blaine turns to look at Rachel and Finn, not knowing what to do, and sees Rachel blow her eyes wide and motion her head madly to where Kurt went as she gives Blaine an awfully conspicuous hint about what he _must_ do next.

Blaine purses his lips, fearful, but turns back to watch Sebastian and waits for him to drive the show to its end. Defeated, Jesse also turns to watch the rest of it.

As soon as Sebastian steps off the stage and gets lost in the crowd (as the night hours neared, the bar got crammed up with more and more people,) Blaine also gets up swiftly and motions to where Sebastian’s booth used to be seen. “Sorry, I’ll go—um—talk to him. To _Sebastian,_ I mean,” he explains to the group before he turns to leave, not waiting to catch eyes with Jesse.

When Jesse gets up and tries to climb out of the booth as well, Rachel starts nudging Finn furiously to do something.

“Um, hey, man,” Finn calls and waits with cold feet for when Jesse turns around to look at him. He does once he’s standing by Santana’s side. “If you wanna find Kurt, I—you shouldn’t, now,” Finn puts it in a not-so-smooth way; an awkward moment of silence follows. Jesse raises his eyebrows. “No, trust me; it’s better to leave him be when he says ‘I’ll go get some air’—it’s something we’ve been through as one of our coded signals for ‘don’t come near me until I come to you’,” Finn comes up with a slightly better explanation this time, staring Jesse down with certitude. “Just—how about you and I go get us the next round and wait for Kurt to come to us together?” Finn suggests as he starts to climb out; Rachel gives him a secret, grateful pat on the back when he squeezes past her. “This was a whole lotta weird, the thing that just happened, but I’m sure Blaine’s onto it. Probably just a misunderstanding,” Finn keeps talking some kind of sweet talk when he claps Jesse on the back and starts leading him to the bar.

Rachel, Santana, and Britt are left sitting alone, the former two breathing a quiet sigh of relief. Britt steals a fry from the plate in the middle of their table when Rachel and Santana catch eyes, the latter gives the former a perfunctory smile right before she turns to Britt and starts up a private conversation.

“Sorry—to interrupt,” Rachel says, reaching out an apologetic hand. “But—do you know who that—was?” she asks Santana, curious to gain insight into the situation via Blaine’s closest friend’s point of view. “I mean _I_ certainly thought Finn told me everything…”

Judging by Santana’s face, she seems to be less than excited at the concept of being interrupted but does swallow the thousands of quips racing through her mind as she turns to look through the crowd in search of the sleazy meerkat.

“This was the guy who hit on Blaine when he and Kurt were left alone at the gay bar,” she mumbles, her eyes still searching. “Apparently, our boys _had some fun_ that Blaine just forgot to mention to me when he told me about that night. Something that gave them out to that Meerkat.”

Britt nudges Santana softly with her shoulder. “I told you those were dolphins,” she corrects her in a gentle voice.

*

When Blaine steps out, there are quite a few people socializing there, some of them smoking, some of them not, and the place seems to be nicely designed and cozily lit against the fresh, quiet, dark summer night. The freshness of it, though, gets mingled by the wafts of cigarette smoke, which Blaine gladly inhales deep into his lungs, closing his eyes for a peaceful second.

One of The Pixies’ songs is playing softly, echoing off the walls and into the open space where the patches of the dark sky can be seen right through the branches of the trees that cloister the outdoor smoking area.

_hey_  
_must be_  
_a devil_  
_between us_

Kurt stands with a lit cigarette in his hand some feet away from a pack of loud people, watching the light-bluish spot on the sky just above the horizon where the sun disappeared some hours ago.

It takes Blaine some time to find him. Blaine takes some time to watch him from afar. Then slowly, he makes his way toward him, hands tucked in his pockets.

Kurt closes his eyes, exhaling the smoke when Blaine steps up to him, close. Gently, Blaine takes Kurt’s cigarette, sparks racing through them both when their fingers do so little as brush against each other. Kurt strains his jaw and crosses his arms, opening his eyes to look at Blaine.

_but hey_  
_where_  
_have you_  
_been?_

Blaine takes a drag, then drops his head back and holds the smoke inside his lungs for a wantonly long amount of time. Kurt stands still in front of him, eyes brushing down the stretch of Blaine’s neck as Blaine lets the smoke out.

When Blaine pulls his head back, he looks Kurt in the eye and offers him his cigarette back. Kurt takes it; Blaine watches him make the next drag.

_if you go_  
_i will surely die_

“Our last one will be ours,” Blaine says a sentence that makes little sense, but he has little care for it. He takes a tiny step forward, his chest and Kurt’s forearm that Kurt still hugs himself with touch. Blaine lets his nose press to Kurt’s shoulder softly as Kurt exhales the smoke, his head turned to the side.

_we’re cha-_  
_-a-ined_  
_we’re cha-_  
_ained!_

Blaine lets one of his hands ghost over Kurt’s hip warmly as he nuzzles the curve of Kurt’s shoulder, soft and quiet in his movements. Kurt pinches the cigarette between his fingers and hugs himself tighter when Blaine’s nose starts inching closer to Kurt’s neck and his warm hands finally make contact with Kurt’s waist. Kurt turns to take another drag when Blaine brushes his nose against the pale lane of Kurt’s neck, stroking his waist as he does so.

Blaine’s curls start to tickle Kurt’s cheek and Kurt squeezes his eyes shut as he finally lets go of himself, letting Blaine close the remaining inches between their bodies. He tugs Kurt slowly into a full-fledged embrace, snug and warm and so very much _loving_ as Blaine presses his brow into the crane of Kurt’s neck that Kurt feels the damned heaviness press on the bridge of his nose, burn at his closed eyes.

Kurt throws his head back in frustration as Blaine pulls him closer, angry at the evanescence of his desire to even smoke when Blaine’s all wrapped around him. Kurt throws his cigarette to the ground which he never does, then crushes it with his foot, exasperated as he stomps on it.

Blaine hugs him tighter to his chest as he nuzzles up against the line of Kurt’s jaw and strokes a soothing hand down Kurt’s lower back.

_uh uh!_  
_all night_  
_and Mary ain’t you tired_  
_of this_  
_uh!_

Kurt sucks in a shuddering breath, staring up at the shelter above them, very much close to mouthing a cuss before he finally—lets himself wrap his arms around Blaine’s frame and collects him closer to his chest, truly, _truly_ helpless not to.

Blaine noses up Kurt’s earlobe, keeping Kurt’s back warm with his fingers splayed out against its strong expanse. Kurt’s eyes flutter closed as he hides his face in Blaine’s ticklish mop of curls, pressing one hand at Blaine’s shoulder blades and sliding the other one up into Blaine’s hair where it closes around a fistful of curls.

“Kurt,” Blaine whimpers softly into his ear, nudging his head back into Kurt’s grip on his hair.

Kurt’s chest expands as he sighs shakily, bumping their temples together. “Hm?” he asks Blaine, staring at the sky in the distance—the little patch visible behind the city.

“Will you take me to Lima?” Blaine asks in a small, raspy voice, thumbs stroking the soft fabric of Kurt’s cashmere V-neck, both of them one amalgam of entangled limbs and the warmth shared between them. “Please?” Blaine whispers like a secret into Kurt’s ear, and Kurt’s brow furrows as his grip on Blaine grows tighter.

Kurt sighs and turns to press his cheek to Blaine’s, taking a moment to just stand like this in the secluded corner of the smoking area, cradling each other like there’s no life for them on their own.

Kurt feels Blaine’s heart threaten to jump out of his chest with how mad-fast it beats in anticipation of Kurt’s answer, and Kurt finds his own heart start to gallop, trying to catch up with Blaine’s.

Kurt closes his eyes, frowns, and presses his lips to Blaine’s ear. “Of course I will, Blaine,” Kurt finally responds.

And Blaine feels something inside him break at the raw, painful, defenseless quality Kurt’s voice takes on at this moment. He kisses Kurt’s cheek, the line of Kurt’s jaw, the soft skin on Kurt’s neck, reaching up to hold the back of Kurt’s neck when he does so.

“Thank you,” Blaine rumbles in between the warm kisses he showers Kurt’s neck with. Kurt’s other hand rises to cup the back of Blaine’s head. “Thank you,” Blaine repeats when he pulls back the tiniest bit to look Kurt in the eye.

Blaine kisses the corner of Kurt’s mouth, so soft Blaine feels like _crying_ and so rosy and _perfect_ Blaine has to lick his own lips when he pulls back to stop himself from turning this into anything more than what they can afford here and now.

Blaine’s skin is on violent fire just from this small, chaste touch and it takes everything Blaine has in him to take a step back then, and to let go of Kurt, and to take his eyes off of his flushed face, off of his inviting mouth that fell open when Blaine kissed it, off of his eyes that Kurt still holds closed, and off of the sweet reddened spots on Kurt’s skin where Blaine mouthed at it.

It takes every fucking scrap of Blaine’s willpower to turn away then and to start walking and to push the exit door open and to return to the dark, stuffy, loud, sickening-him-to-his-stomach _reality._


End file.
